1 






D h to 




T' 






CiSEHRIGHT DEPOSrr. 



The Soul of Tht Soldier 



By CHAPLAIN THOMAS TIPLADY 
FIFTH EDITION 

The Gross at the Front 

Fragments from the Trenches. 

12mo. Cloth. Net $1.00. 

" ' Vivid ' is too dim a word to express 
the living pictures which this chaplain has 
seen in France. Some of the chapters are 
among the finest pieces of pathos we have 
read anywhere. Read the book and you 
will be a better man for all your tasks." 

— Chicago Standard. 

The Soul of the Soldier 

Echoes from the Western Front. 

12mo. Cloth. Net $1.25. 

An astonishing story Chaplain Tiplady 
here has to tell — one in which the very 
foundations of existence seem temporarily 
uprooted, and the world tinned upside-down. 
Yet never, in the telling, does he lose the un- 
swerving faith and cheering optimism which 
formed the prevailing note of The Cross 
AT THE Front, nor for a moment relaxes his 
belief that the cause of justice, truth and 
righteousness is that for which the Allied 
armies are now fighting. 



The Soul of The Soldier 

Sketches from the Western 
Battle-Front 



BY 

THOMAS TIPLADY 

Chaplain to the Forces 
Author of " The Cross at the Front," etc. 




New York Chicago Toronto 

Fleming H. Revell Company 

London and Edinburgh 



Copyright, 1918, by 
FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY 



.A 






New York : 158 Fifth Avenue 
Chicago : 1 7 North Wabash Ave. 
Toronto: 25 Richmond Street, W. 



MAR 19^^^^ 

©CI,A4941G2 



To THE Memory of the Many «* White Men'* 

I have known and loved in the London Territorials, who, 
being dedicate to their Country and the cause of Liberty, went 
over the parapet and did not return. 

"These laid the world away; poured out the red 
Sweet wine of youth: gave up the years to be 
Of work and joy, and that unhoped serene 
That men call age; and those who would have been 
Their sons they gave — their immortality." 



PREFACE 

THE sketches in this book and in my 
previous one, "The Cross at the 
Front," are attempts to show the soul 
of the soldier serving in France as I have 
seen it during the year and a half that I have 
been with him. It is a padre's privilege and 
duty to be the voice with which, in public 
worship, the soldiers speak to God; and 
through which their last thoughts are borne to 
their friends at home. He is their voice both 
when they are sick or wounded, and when they 
lie silent in the grave. He speaks of their 
hopes and fears, hardships and heroisms, 
laughter and tears. As best he may he tries 
to tell, to those who have a right and a long- 
ing to know, how they thought, and how they 
bore themselves in the great day of trial when 
all risked their lives and many laid them down. 
Soldiers, as a rule, are either inarticulate or 
do not care to speak of themselves; and the 
padre has to be their spokesman if ever their 
deeper thoughts and finer actions are to be 

7 



8 Preface 

known to their friends. To do this he may 
have to bring himself into the picture, or even 
illustrate a common thing in their lives by a 
personal experience of his own. To reveal life 
and thought at the Front in the third person, 
and without sacrificing truth and vividness, re- 
quires a degree of literary power and art which 
cannot be expected of a padre to whom writing 
is but a by-product, and not his main work. 

I have written but little of military opera- 
tions^ — these things are not in my province. 
Moreover, they are not the things which are 
most revealing. The presence of Spring is first 
and most surely revealed by the flowers in our 
gardens and lanes; and the soldier is most 
clearly seen in the little things that happen on 
the march — in his billet or in the Dressing 
Station. Some things are not seen at all. They 
are only felt, and my opinion about them must 
be taken for what it is worth. One knows 
what the men are by their influence on one's 
own mind and life. I do not judge the 
morality and spirituality of our soldiers en- 
tirely by their habits and speech, for these are^ 
but outward and clumsy expressions of the 
inner life and are largely conventional. There 
Is something else to put in the reckoning, and 
to find out what the soldiers are worth to us 
we must somehow get behind their words and 



Preface 9 

actions and find out what they are worth to 
God, whose terrible wheel of war is shaping 
their characters. 

I appraise them mostly by the total effect 
of the impact of their souls on mine. I know 
their thoughts and feelings by the thoughts 
and feelings they inspire in me. "Do men 
gather grapes of thorns or figs of thistles?" 
There are certain thoughts and emotions that 
only come to me strongly when I am with the 
soldiers or when I am living again with them 
in memory, and so, I take these as their gift 
to me and judge the men by their influence 
on my character. Character is, in its in- 
fluence, subtle as Spring. Words and actions 
by themselves are too coarse and conventional 
to do anything but mislead us In judging the 
quality of our men. "By their fruits ye shall 
know them." Not by their leaves. Fruit is 
seed. In the seed the tree reproduces itself. 
And reproduction, whether in physical, moral 
or spiritual life, is the test of vitality. 

I have not unduly loaded my pages with 
ghastly details of war, because their effect on the 
mind of the reader who has not been at the 
Front would be false and distorting. The 
reader would be more horrified in imagining 
them than our soldiers are In seeing them. I 
have tried rather to show life at the Front, 



10 Preface 

with its mingling of red and gold, horror and 
happiness, as it affects the soldier; so that his 
friends at home may see it as he sees it, and 
with his sense of proportion. If I could only 
do it, as well as I intend it, my pictures would 
create a truer sympathy between the home and 
the trench. Some would find comfort for their 
hearts, and others would awake to a new and 
noble seriousness. Soldiers have suffered 
much through imperfect sympathies. They 
have been pitied for the wrong things, and 
left to freeze when they needed warmth. 
Only when we realize their dignity and great- 
ness and the true nature of their experiences 
can we be their comrades and helpers. Life 
at the Front is brutal and terrifying, and yet 
our soldiers are neither brutalized nor terror- 
ized, for there is something great and noble 
at the Front which keeps life pure and sweet 
and the men gentle and chivalrous. When 
"the boys" come home their friends will, m 
almost every case, find them just as bright, 
affectionate and good as when they went out. 
The only change will be a subtle one — a deep- 
ening in character and manly quality, a broad- 
ening in mind and creed, and an impatience 
with cant and make-believe whether in politics 
or business, Christianity or Rationalism. 
There will be an air of indefinable greatness 



Preface 11 

about them as of men who have been at grips 
with the realities of life and death. 

In a footnote to one of his songs, Edward 
Teschemacher says that the gypsies, as they 
wander through the country, leave a sprinkling 
of grass or wild flowers at the cross-roads to 
indicate, to those who come after them, the 
road they have taken. These flowers are 
known as the "Patterain." 

These essays are my Patterain — wild flowers 
plucked in France, and left to mark the red 
path trod during the months I have been with 
my comrades at the Front. 

I would the flowers were worthier, but such 
as I have, I give; and they are taken out of 
my heart. 

"Where my caravan has rested 

Flowers I leave you on the grass; 

All the flowers of love and memory; 

You will find them when you pass." 

THOMAS TIPLADY. 

British Expeditionary Force, France. 



CONTENTS 

CHAP, PAGE 

I. The Swan at Ypres . . T 



II. The Roadmakers . . , 

III. The Glamour of the Front 

IV. A White Handkerchief . 

V. The Songs Our Soldiers Sing 
VI. Easter Sunday 
VII. "Now THE Day is Over" . 
VIII. Sons of the Motherland . 
IX. The Terror by Night 
X. "Eton Boys Never Duck!" 
XI. "Missing" .... 
XII. "It Must be Sunday" 
XIII. Our Tommies Never Fail Us 



XIV. The Cross at Neuve Chapelle 157 



XV. The Children of Our Dead 
XVI. A Funeral under Fire 
XVII. A Soldier's Calvary . 
XVIII. The Hospital Train . 
XIX. After Winter, Spring 

13 



15 

25 
41 
52 
58 
71 
82 

lOI 

109 
124 
130 
141 
149 



167 
178 
182 
194 
201 



I 

THE SWAN AT YPRES 

FOR three years the storm center of the 
British battle front has been at Ypres. 
Every day and night it has been the 
standing target of thousands of guns. Yet, 
amid all the havoc and thunder of the artillery, 
the graceful white form of a swan had been 
seen gliding over the water of the moat. It 
never lacked food, and was always welcome 
to a share of Tommy's rations. In the Battle 
of Messines — I had the story first-hand from 
a lieutenant of artillery whose battery was 
hidden close by, and who was an eye-witness 
of the incident — a shell burst near the swan, 
and it was mortally wounded. For three long 
years it had spread its white wings as gallantly 
as the white sails of Drake's flagship when he 
sailed out of Plymouth Sound to pluck the beard 
of the Spaniard. But now its adventurous 
voyaging was over. Another beautiful and 
innocent thing had been destroyed by the war 
and had passed beyond recall. There was no 
dying swan-song heard on the waters, but all 

15 



16 The Swan at Ypres 

who saw its passing felt that the war had taken 
on a deeper shade of tragedy. 

Many a "white man" had been slain near 
the spot but somehow the swan seemed a 
mystical being, and invulnerable. It was a relic 
of the days of peace, and a sign of the survival 
of purity and grace amid the horrors and 
cruelties of war. It spoke of the sacred things 
that yet remain — the beautiful things of the 
soul upon which war can lay no defiling finger. 
Now it had gone from the water and Ypres 
seems more charred than ever, and the war 
more terrible. The death of the swan revealed 
against its white wings the peculiar inhumanity 
of the present war. It is a war in which the 
enemy spares nothing and no one. He is more 
blind and merciless than the Angel of Death 
which swept over Egypt, for the angel had 
regard to the blood which the Israelites had 
sprinkled over the lintels of their doors and 
he passed by in mercy. To the German Eagle 
every living creature is legitimate prey. No 
blood upon the lintel can save the inmate; not 
even the cross of blood on the hospital tent or 
ship. Wounded or whole, combatant or non- 
combatant, its beak and talons tear the tender 
flesh of all and its lust is not sated. 

In Belgium and Serbia it is believed that 
more women and children perished than men. 



The Swan at Ypres 17 

Things too hideous for words were done pub- 
licly in the market-squares. Neither age nor 
sex escaped fire and sword. The innocent babe 
was left to suck the breast of its dead mother 
or was dandled on the point of the bayonet. 
What resistance can the Belgian swan make 
to the German eagle? It needs must lie torn 
and bleeding beneath its talons. The German 
Emperor has waded deeper in blood than 
Macbeth, and has slain the innocent in their 
sleep. Even the sea is full of the women, 
children, and non-combatant men he has 
drowned. His crown is cemented together with 
innocent blood and its jewels are the eyes of 
murdered men and women. The wretched 
man has made rivers of blood to flow yet not 
a drop in them is from his own veins or the 
veins of his many sons. Napoleon risked his 
life with his men in every battle but this man 
never once. While sending millions to their 
death he yet consents to live, and protects his 
life with the anxious care a miser bestows on 
his gold. Alone among large families In Ger- 
many his household is without a casualty. 
Though a nation be white and innocent as the 
Belgian swan it will not escape his sword, and 
he will swoop upon it the more readily because 
it is unarmed. The swan cannot live where 
the eagle flies, and one or the other must die. 



18 The Swan at Ypres 

But the stricken swan of Ypres is not merely 
the symbol of Belgium and her fate. There 
are other innocents who have perished or been 
sorely wounded. The whole creation is groan- 
ing and travailing in pain. The neutral nations 
are suffering with the belligerent, and the lower 
creatures are suffering with mankind. 

Next to seeing wounded men on the roads at 
the front, I think the saddest sight is that of 
dying horses and mules. Last winter they had 
to stand, with little cover, exposed to the bitter 
blasts. It was impossible to keep them clean 
or dry, for the roads were churned into liquid 
mud and both mules and drivers were plastered 
with it from head to foot. To make things 
worse there was a shortage of fodder; and 
horses waste away rapidly under ill-feeding. 
Before the fine weather had given them a 
chance to recover weight and strength, the 
Battle of Arras began, and every living beast 
of burden, as well as every motor-engine, was 
strained to its utmost. The mule is magnificent 
for war, and our battles have been won as 
much by mules as men. Haig could rely on 
one as much as on the other. The mule will 
eat anything, endure anything, and, when un- 
derstood and humored by its driver, will do 
anything. It works until it falls dead by the 
roadside. In the spring, hundreds died in har- 



The Swan at Ypres 19 

ness. In fact, few die except in harness. They 
die facing the foe, dragging rations along shell- 
swept roads to the men in the trenches. 

On two miles of road I have counted a dozen 
dead mules; and burial parties are sent out to 
put them out of sight. One night, alone, I got 
three dying mules shot. The road was crowded 
with traffic, yet it was difficult to find either 
an officer with a revolver or a transport-driver 
with a rifle. I had to approach scores before 
I could find a man who had the means to put 
a mule out of its misery; and we were within 
two miles of our Front. So rigid is our line of 
defense that those behind it do not trouble to 
take arms. Even when I found a rifleman he 
hesitated to shoot a mule. There is a rule that 
no horse or mule must be shot without proper 
authority, and when you consider the enormous 
cost of one the necessity for the rule is obvious. 
I had therefore to assure a rifleman that I 
would take full responsibility for his action. 
He then loaded up, put the nozzle against the 
mule's forehead and pulled the trigger. A 
tremor passed through the poor thing's body 
and its troubles were over. It had come all 
the way from South America to wear itself out 
carrying food to fighting men, and it died by 
the road when its last ounce of strength was 
spent. 



20 The Swan at Ypres 

The mule knows neither love nor offspring. 
Apart from a few gambols in the field, or 
while tethered to the horse-lines, It knows 
nothing but work. It Is the supreme type of 
the drudge. It Is one of the greatest factors 
In the war, and yet it receives scarcely any 
recognition and more of whipping than of 
praise. Only too often I have seen their poor 
shell-mangled bodies lying by the roadside 
waiting till the battle allowed time for their 
burial. Yet what could be more innocent of 
any responsibility for the war? They are as 
Innocent as the swan on the moat at Ypres. 

Yet the greatest suffering among Innocents is 
not found at the Front at all. It is found at 
home. At the Front there is suffering of body 
and mind, but at home there is the suffering 
of the heart. Every soldier knows that his 
mother and wife suffer more than he does, and 
he pities them from his soul. War is a cross 
on which Woman is crucified. The soldier dies 
of his wounds in the morning of life, but his 
wife lingers on in pain through the long garish 
day until the evening shadows fall. There is 
no laughter at home such as you hear at the 
Front, or even in the hospitals. One finds a 
gayety among the regiments In France such as 
is unknown among the people left at home. It 
is the sunshine of the street as compared with 



The Swan at Ypres 21 

the hght in a shaded room. There is a youth 
and buoyancy at the Front that one misses 
sadly in the homeland. 

To a true woman with a son or husband at 
the Front, life becomes a nightmare. To her 
distorted imagination the most important man 
in the country is not the Prime Minister but 
the postman. She cannot get on with her 
breakfast for listening for his footsteps. There 
is no need for him to knock at the door, she 
has heard him open the gate and walk up the 
gravel path. Her heart is tossed like a bubble 
on the winds of hope and fear. She finds her- 
self behind the door without knowing how she 
got there, and her hand trembles as she picks 
up the letter to see if the address is in "his" 
handwriting or an official's. The words, "On 
His Majesty's Service," she dreads like a 
witch's incantation. They may be innocent 
enough, and cover nothing more than belated 
Commission Papers, but she trembles lest they 
should be but the fair face of a dark-hearted 
messenger, who is to blot out the light of her 
life forever. If she goes out shopping and sees 
a telegraph-boy go in the direction of her home 
she forgets her purchases and hurries back to 
see if he is going to knock at her door. The 
rosy-faced messenger has become a sinister 
figure, an imp from the nether world. He may 



22 The Swan at Ypres 

be bringing news of her loved one's arrival "on 
leave," but so many evil faces of fear and 
doubt peer through the windows of her heart 
that she cannot believe in the innocence and 
good-will of the whistling boy. Her whole 
world is wrapped up in his little orange-colored 
envelope. 

The boys at the Front know of the anxiety 
and suspense that darken their homes, and they 
do all they can to lighten them. There were 
times on the Somme when the men were utterly 
exhausted with fighting and long vigils in the 
trenches. Water was scarce, and a mild 
dysentery came into evidence. No fire could be 
lighted to cook food or make hot tea. The 
ranks had been thinned, and only two officers 
were left to each company. The weather was 
bad and the captured trench uncomfortable. 
Any moment word might come for another 
attack. The campaign was near its close, and 
the work must be completed despite the prev- 
alent exhaustion. The officers were too tired, 
depressed and preoccupied to censor hundreds 
of letters. In front of him each could see a gap- 
ing grave. The sun was rapidly "going west" 
and leaving them to the cold and dark. Noth- 
ing seemed to matter in comparison with that. 
To hold services were impossible and I felt 
that the best I could do was to walk through 



The Swan at Ypres 23 

the trench, chat with the officers and men, 
gather up the men's letters and take them back 
and censor in my tent. This gave the officers 
times to write their own, and an opportunity 
to post them. 

But note, I pray you, the nobility of these 
gallant fellows. All of them were exhausted 
and depressed. The shadows of death were 
thick about them, yet when I opened their let- 
ters, I found myself — with two exceptions out 
of three or four hundred — in an entirely dif- 
ferent atmosphere. It was a sunny atmosphere 
in which birds were singing. The men said 
nothing of their suffering, their depression, 
their fears for the future. The black wings of 
death cast no shadow over their pages. They 
said they were "all right," "merry and bright" 
and "soon going back for a long rest." They 
told their mothers what kind of cigarettes to 
send, and gave them details how to make up 
the next parcel. They talked as if death were 
out of sight — a sinister fellow with whom they 
had nothing to do. 

The officers, of course, censor their own 
letters, so I did not see how they wrote. But 
I know. They wrote as the men wrote, and 
probably with a still lighter touch. Their 
homes were dark enough with anxiety, yet not 
by any word of theirs would the shadows be 



24 The Swan at Ypres 

deepened. They could not shield themselves 
from war's horrors but they would do their 
best to shield their white swans at home. They 
could not keep their women folk out of the 
war, but they would deliver them from its 
worst horrors. Not till they had fallen would 
they let the shafts pass them to their mothers 
and wives; rather would they gather them in 
their own breasts. In the hour of the world's 
supreme tragedy there was a woman standing 
by the cross, and the august Sufferer, with dy- 
ing breath, bade His closest friend take her, 
when the last beam faded, to his own home 
and be In His place, a son to her. I know 
no scene that better represents the feelings of 
our soldiers towards their loved ones at home. 
Their women gave them Inspiration and joy 
in the days of peace, and they still float before 
their vision amid the blackened ruins of war, 
as beautiful and stainless in their purity as the 
white swan on the moat of Ypres. 



II 

THE ROADMAKERS 

WE had just marched from one part of 
the Front to another and by a round- 
about way. Each morning the 
Quartermaster and "the billeting party" went 
on before, and each evening we slept in a vil- 
lage that was strange to us. Each of the men 
carried on his back a pack and equipment 
weighing about eighty or ninety pounds. 
Through sleet and blizzard and, for the 
most part, through open, exposed country, 
we continued our march without a day of 
rest. By the fifth evening we reached the vil- 
lage where we were to have three or four 
weeks of rest and training before entering the 
trenches for the spring offensive. We had 
unpacked and were sitting at dinner when a 
telegram came announcing that all previous 
plans were canceled, and that at dawn we must 
take to the road again. Something unexpected 
had happened, good or ill, we knew not which, 
and we had to enter the line in front of Arras. 

25 



£6 The Roadmakers 

For three days more we marched. Daily the 
sound of the guns came nearer, and the men 
were tired and footsore. They were also 
deeply disappointed of the long rest to which 
they had been looking forward after a winter 
in the trenches at Neuve Chapelle. Yet they 
marched cheerily enough. "It's the War!" 
they said one to another and, true to their own 
philosophy, "packed up their troubles in their 
old kit bags and smiled." When any man 
faltered a bit, as if about to fall out by the 
way, the others cheered him on by singing 
"Old Soldiers never die" to the tune of the 
old Sunday school hymn, "Kind words can 
never die." Sometimes an officer would 
shoulder a man's rifle to the end of the march, 
or until he felt better. In eight unbroken days 
of marching we covered ninety-eight miles and 
finally arrived at a camp of huts within a day's 
march of the trenches we are to occupy. Here, 
where our huts stand like islands in a sea of 
mud, we are, unless* suddenly needed, to take 
a few days' rest. 

On the ninety-eight miles of road over which 
we tramped, we passed company after com- 
pany of British roadmakers. In some parts 
they were widening the road, in. other parts 
repairing it. The roads of Northeastern 
France are handed over to our care as com- 



The Roadmakers 2T 

pletely as If they were in England. Our road- 
makers are everywhere, and as we pass they 
stand, pick or shovel In hand, to salute the 
colonel and shout some humorous remark to 
the laughing riflemen — only to get back as much 
as they give. 

This morning I visited the neighboring 
village to arrange for a Sunday service. The 
roads are hopeless for bicycles at this time of 
the year, so I fell back on Adam's method of 
getting about. The road to the village was 
torn and broken, and "thaw precautions" were 
being observed. Everywhere It was ankle-deep 
in mud and, in the holes, knee-deep. Innumer- 
able motor-wagons had crushed it beneath their 
ponderous weight, and my feet had need of 
my eyes to guide them. In skirting the holes 
and rough places, I added quite a mile to the 
journey. 

It was annoying to get along so slowly, and 
I called the road "rotten" and blamed the War 
for its destructive work. Then I saw that I 
had been unjust In judgment. The War had 
constructed more than it had destroyed. The 
road had been a little muddy country lane, but 
the soldiers had made it wide as Fleet Street, 
and it was bearing a mightier traffic than that 
famous thoroughfare night and day. The 
little road with its mean perfections and Im- 



S8 The Roadmakers 

perfections had gone, and the large road with 
big faults and big virtues had come. This 
soldiers' road has faults the farmers' road 
knew not, but then it has burdens and duties 
unknown before, and it has had no time to 
prepare for them. Like our boy-officers who 
are bearing grown men's burdens of responsi- 
bility and bearing them well, the road has had 
HO time to harden. To strengthen itself for 
its duties, it eats up stones as a giant eats up 
food. I had no right to look for the smooth- 
ness of Oxford Street or the Strand. Such 
avenues represent the work of centuries, this 
of days. They have grown with their burdens, 
but this has had vast burdens thrown upon it 
suddenly, and while it was immature. Oxford 
Street and Fleet Street are the roads of peace, 
and laden with wealth and luxury, law and 
literature — things that can wait. But on this 
road of the soldiers' making, nothing Is al- 
lowed except it be concerned with matters of 
life and death. It is the road of war, and 
there is a terrible urgency about it. Over it 
pass ammunition to the guns, rations to the 
soldiers in the trenches, ambulances bearing 
back the wounded to the hospital. Whatever 
its conditions the work must be done, and there 
is no room for a halting prudence or the pride 
of appearance. Rough though it is and muddy, 



The Roadmakers 29 

over it is passing, for all who have eyes to 
see, a new and better civilization and a wider 
liberty. I had grumbled at the worn-out road 
when I ought to have praised it. I was as an 
ingrate who finds fault with his father's hands 
because they are rough and horny. 

It was a group of soldier-roadmakers who 
brought me to my senses. They were making 
a new road through the fields, and it branched 
off from the one I was on. I saw its crude 
beginning and considered the burdens it would 
soon have to bear. As I stood watching these 
English roadmakers my mind wandered down 
the avenues of time, and I saw the Roman 
soldiers building their immortal roads through 
England. They were joining town to town and 
country to country. They were introducing 
the people of the North to those of the South, 
and bringing the East into fellowship with the 
West. I saw come along their roads the 
union of all England followed at, some dis- 
tance, by that of England, Scotland and Wales ; 
and I regretted that there was no foundation 
on which they could build a road to Ireland. 
I saw on those soldier-built roads, also, Chris- 
tianity and Civilization marching, and in the 
villages and towns by the wayside they found 
a home whence they have sent out missionaries 
and teachers to the ends of the earth. 



30 The Roadmakers 

"The captains and the kings depart." The 
Roman Empire is no more, but the Roman 
roads remain. They direct our modern life 
and business with an inevitabihty the Roman 
soldiers never exercised. In two thousand 
years the Empire may have fallen apart and 
become a thing of the past; but the roads her 
sons have built in France, these two-and-a-half 
years, will abide forever and be a perpetual 
blessing; for, of things made by hands, there 
is, after the church and the home, nothing more 
sacred than the road. The roadmaker does 
more for the brotherhood of man and the 
federation of the world than the most eloquent 
Orator. The roadmaker has his dreams and 
visions as well as the poet, and he expresses 
them in broken stones. He uses stones as 
artists use colors, and orators words. He 
touches them — transient as they are — with im- 
mortality. A little of his soul sticks to each 
stone he uses, and though the stone perishes 
the road remains. His body may perish more 
quickly than the stones and be laid in some 
quiet churchyard by the wayside, but his soul 
will never utterly forsake the road he helped 
to make. In man's nature, and in all his works, 
there is a strange blending of the temporal 
and the eternal, and in nothing is it more 
marked than in the roads he builds. 



The Roadmakers 31 

The roadmaker is the pioneer among men 
and without him there would be neither artist 
nor orator. He goes before civilization as 
John the Baptist went before Christ, and he 
is as rough and elemental. Hard as his own 
stones, without him mankind would have re- 
mained savage and suspicious as beasts of prey; 
and art, science and literature would have had 
no beginning. His road may begin in war, but 
it ends in peace. 

The pioneers I saw roadmaking were, for the 
greater part, over military age, and such as 
I had often seen leaning heavily on the bar 
of some miserable beer-house. In those days 
they seemed of the earth, earthy, and the stars 
that lure to high thoughts and noble en- 
deavors seemed to shine on them in vain. But 
one never knows what is passing in the heart 
of another. Of all things human nature is 
the most mysterious and deceptive. God seems 
to play at hide-and-seek with men. He hides 
pearls in oysters lying in the ooze of the sea; 
and gold under the everlasting snows of the 
Arctic regions. Diamonds he buries deep down 
in the dirt beneath the African veldt. He 
places Christ in a carpenter's shop, Joan of 
Arc in a peasant's dwelling, Lincoln in a 
settler's cabin, and Burns in a crude cottage 
built by his father's own hands. He hides 



32 The Roadmakers 

generous impulses and heroic traits in types of 
men that in our mean imaginations we can only 
associate with the saw-dust sprinkled bar-room. 
Only when war or pestilence have kindled their 
fierce and lurid flames do we find the hidden 
nobility that God has stored away in strange 
places — places often as foul and unlikely as 
those where a miser stores his gold. 

When Diogenes went about with a candle 
in search of an honest man did he think to 
look in the taverns and slums? I fancy not. 
Not Diogenes' candle but the "Light of the 
World" was needed to reveal the treasure God 
has hidden in men. Christ alone knew where 
His Father had hidden His wealth and could 
guide us to it. In this time of peril when 
every man with any nobility in him is needed 
to stand in the deadly breach, and with body 
and soul hold back the brutality and tyranny 
that would enslave the world we have, like the 
woman in the parable, lit a candle and searched 
every corner of our kingdom diligently. In 
the dust of unswept corners we have found 
many a coin of value that, but for our ex- 
ceeding need, would have remained hidden. 
To me, the wealth and wonder of the war have 
been found in its sweepings. Time and again 
we have found those who were lost, and a new 
happiness has come into life. To the end of 



The Roadmakers 33 

my days I shall walk the earth with reverent 
feet. I did not know men were so great. I 
have looked at life without seeing the gold 
through the dust, and have been no better than 
a Kaffir child playing marbles with diamonds, 
unaware of their value. I have gone among 
my fellows with proud step where I ought to 
have walked humbly, and have rushed in where 
angels feared to tread. 

Life at the Front has made me feel mean 
among mankind. My comrades have been so 
great. In days long past, I have trodden on 
the hem of Christ's garment without knowing 
it. I have not seen its jewels because I, and 
others, have so often trodden it in the mire. 
Yet, through the mire of slum and tavern, the 
jewels have emerged pearl-white and ruby-red. 
And I feel that I owe to a large part of man- 
kind an apology for having been before the 
war so blind, callous and superficial. But for 
the agony and bloody sweat in which I have 
seen my fellows, I should never have known 
them for what they are, and the darkness of 
death would have covered me before I had 
realized what made the death of Christ 
and the sufferings of all the martyrs well 
worth while. Now there is a new light upon 
my path and I shall see the features of 
an angel through the dirt on a slum-child's 



34 The Roadmakers 

face. Words of Christ that once lay in the 
shadow now stand out clearly, for whenever 
we get below the surface of life we come to 
Him. He is there before us, and awaiting our 
coming. 

I also understand, now, something of the 
meaning of the word^ which the Unemployed 
scrawled upon their banner before the war — 
"Damn your charity. Give us work." It was 
a deep and true saying, and taught them by a 
stern teacher. When the war came we did 
"damn our charity" and gave them "work." 
Many a man got his first chance of doing "a 
man's job," and rose to the full height of his 
manhood. Many hitherto idle and drunken, 
were touched in their finer parts. They saw 
their country's need, and though their country 
had done little to merit their gratitude, they 
responded to her call before some of the more 
prudent and sober. Those who were young 
went out to fight, and every officer can tell 
stories about their behavior in the hours of 
danger and suffering which bring tears to the 
eyes and penitence to the heart. Those above 
military age went out to make roads over which 
their younger brothers and sons could march, 
and get food, ammunition, or an ambulance 
according to their needs. Among the group 
of middle-aged roadmakers that I saw there 



The Roadmakers 35 

were, I doubt not, some who had been counted 
wastrels and who had made but a poor show 
of life. Now they had got work that made 
them feel that they were men and not mendi- 
cants, and they were "making good." 

While I watched them a lark rose from a 
neighboring field and sang over them a song 
of the coming spring. It was the first lark I 
had heard this year, and I was glad it mingled 
its notes with the sounds of the roadmakers' 
shovels. Nature is not so indifferent to human 
struggles, as it sometimes seems. The man 
who stands steadfastly by the right and true 
and bids tyranny and wrong give place will 
find, at last, that he is in league with the stones 
of the field and the birds of the air, and that 
the stars in their courses fight for him. The 
roadmaker and the lark are born friends. 
Both are heralds of coming gladness, and while 
one works, the other sings. True work and 
pure song are never far apart. They are both 
born of hope and seek to body forth the im- 
mortal. A man works while he has faith. 
Would he sow if he did not believe the promise, 
made under the rainbow, that seed-time and 
harvest shall never fail? Or could he sing 
with despair choking his heart? Yet he can 
sing with death choking it. In the very act 
of dying Wesley sang the hymn, "I'll praise my 



36 The Roadmakers 

Maker while I've breath." He sang because 
of the hope of Immortality. He was not turn- 
ing his face to the blank wall of death and 
oblivion but to the opening gate of a fuller 
life. He was soaring sunwards like the lark, 
and soaring sang, 

"And when my voice is lost in death 
Praise shall employ my nobler powers; 
My days of praise shall ne'er be past." 

Joy can sing and Sorrow can sing, but 
Despair is dumb. It has not even a cry, for a 
cry is a call for help as every mother knows, 
and Despair knows no helper. Even the sad- 
dest song has hope in it, as the dreariest desert 
has a well. The loved one is dead but Love 
lives on and whispers of a trysting place beyond 
this bourne of time, where loved and lover 
meet again. The patriot's life may be pouring 
from a dozen wounds on the muddy field of 
battle, but his fast-emptying heart is singing 
with each heavy beat, "Who dies, if my country 
live?" 

Roadmakers have prepared the way for 
missionaries in every land. Trail-blazers are 
not always religious men — often they are wild, 
reckless fellows whom few would allow a place 
in the Kingdom of God — but is not their work 
religious in its final upshot? Do they not. 



The Roadmakers 37 

however unconsciously, "prepare the way of 
the Lord, make straight in the desert a high- 
way for our God?" Close on their heels go 
the missionaries, urged on faster by the pure 
love of souls than the trader by love of lucre. 
The greatest among the roadmakers was a 
missionary himself — David Livingstone. And 
for such an one the name Living-stone is per- 
fect. It has the touch of destiny. Through 
swamp and forest he went where white feet 
had never trod, and blazed a trail for the mes- 
sengers of Christ, until, worn out with fever 
and hardship, he fell asleep at his prayers, to 
wake no more to toil and suffering. 

But while the roadmaker bestows benefits on 
us he also lays obligations, for there can be 
no enlargement of privilege without a corre- 
sponding increase of responsibility. The roads 
the men are making here in France will be good 
for trade. They will open up the country as 
did the military roads of Caesar and Napoleon; 
and along them soldiers are marching who, at 
tremendous cost to themselves, are buying for 
posterity great benefits, and laying upon poster- 
ity great obligations. Posterity must hold and 
enlarge the liberties won for them, and prove 
worthy of their citizenship by resisting tyranny 
"even unto blood." We are here because our 
fathers were heroes and lovers of liberty. Had 



38 The Roadmakers 

they been cowards and slaves theie would have 
been no war for us. As we follow our fathers 
our sons must be ready to follow us. The 
present springs out of the past, and the future 
will spring out of the present. Inheritance 
implies defense on the part of the inheritors. 

The very names they give to their roads 
show that our soldiers have grasped this fact. 
The cold canvas hut in which I am writing is 
officially described as No. i Hut, Oxford 
Street. A little farther off, and running parallel 
with it, is Cambridge Road. There is also an 
Eton Road, Harrow Road, and Marlborough 
Road. Students of the universities and schools 
after which these roads are named are out 
here to defend what these institutions have 
stood for through the hoary centuries. They 
are out to preserve the true conception of 
Liberty and Fair-play, and to build roads along 
which all peoples who desire it can travel un- 
molested by attacks from either tyrants or 
anarchists. 

Right from the beginning of the war, the 
idea of a Road has taken hold of the imagina- 
tion of our soldiers. The first divisions came 
out singing, "It's a long, long way to Tip- 
perary, but my heart's right there." Nowa- 
days the popular song is "There's a long, long 
trail awinding into the Land of my dreams." 



The Roadmakers 39 

They are making a Road of Liberty along 
which all nations may pass to universal peace 
and brotherhood, and where the weak will be 
as safe from oppression as the strong. "It's 
a long, long way to go," but they have seen 
their goal on the horizon, and will either reach 
it or die on the way to it. They have made 
up their minds that never again shall the 
shadow of the Kaiser's mailed fist, or that any 
other tyrant fall across their path. These men 
never sing of war. They hate war. It is a 
brutal necessity forced on them by the ambi- 
tion of a tyrant. Their songs are all of peace 
and none of war. Of the future and not the 
present they sing: 

"Tiddley-iddley-ighty, 
Hurry me home to Blighty; 
Blighty is the place for me." 

Whether they sing with levity or seriousness 
(and levity of manner often veils their serious- 
ness of feeling), it is of a future of peace and 
goodwill they sing. To them the war is a 
hard road leading to a better life for man- 
kind. It is to them what the desert was to 
the Israelites, when they left the bondage of 
Egypt for the liberty of the Land of Promise. 
Therefore they must tread it without faltering 
even as Christ trod the way of the Cross. 



40 The Roadmakers 

"There's a long, long trail awlnding into the 
Land of their dreams" and they will not lose 
faith in their dreams however wearisome the 
way. Elderly navvies and laborers have come 
to smooth the roads for them, and nurses are 
tending those who have fallen broken by the 
way; while across the sundering sea are 
mothers and wives whose prayers make flowers 
spring up at their feet and blossoms break out 
on every tree that fringes the side of the road. 



Ill 

THE GLAMOUR OF THE FRONT 

THERE Is an undoubted glamour about 
the Front, which when at home, in Eng- 
land, cannot be explained. In the army 
or out of it, the wine of life is white and still, 
but at the Front it runs red and sparkling. 
One day I got a lift in a motor-wagon and 
sat on a box by the side of one of the servants 
of the officer's mess at the Aerodrome near 
by. He was going into Doullens, a market 
town, to buy food and some little luxuries. 
Captain Ball, V. C, the prince of English 
flyers, was, up to the time of his death In the 
air, a member of the mess, and the servant 
was telling me how comfortable all the officers 
make their quarters. In a phrase he defined 
the glamour of the Front. 

"One day," he said, "when we were helping 
him to make his room comfortable. Captain 
Ball burst out Into a merry laugh and chuckled, 
'We haven't long to live, but we live well while 
we do live.' " 

There you have It. Life Is concentrated. 
41 



42 The Glamour of the Front 

Death is near — ^just round the corner — so the 
men make the most of their time and "Hve 
well." It has the same quality as "leave" at 
home. Leave is short and uncertain, so we 
"live well." Our friends know it may be the 
last sight of us, and we know it may be our 
last sight of them. They are kind and gen- 
erous to us, as we are to them; and so, the 
ten days of "leave" are just glorious. Ruskin 
says that the full splendor of the sunset lasts 
but a second, and that Turner went out early 
in the evening and watched with rapt attention 
for that one second of supreme splendor and 
delight. He lived for sunsets and while others 
were balancing their accounts, or taking tea, he 
went out to see the daily miracle. The one 
second in which he saw God pass by in the glory 
of the sunset was to him worth ail the twenty- 
four hours. For one second in each day he 
caught the glamour of earth and heaven, and 
went back to his untidy studios blind to ail but 
the splendor he had seen. 

That second each day was life, indeed, and 
the glamour of the Front is like unto it. It is 
the place v/here life sets, and the darkness of 
death draws on. The commonest soldier feels 
it and with true instinct, not less true because 
unconscious, he describes death at the Front 
as "going West." It is the presence of death 



The Glamour of the Front 43 

that gives the Front its glamour, and life its 
concentrated joy and fascination. Captain 
Ball saw it with the intuition of genius when 
he said: "We haven't long to live, but we live 
well while we do live." 

The immediate presence of death at the 
Front gives tone to every expression of life, and 
makes it the kindest place in the world. No 
one feels he can do too much for you, and 
there is nothing you would not do for another. 
Whether you are an officer or a private, you 
can get a lift on any road, in any vehicle, that 
has an inch of room in it. How often have 
I seen a dozen tired Tommies clambering up 
the back of an empty motor-lorry which has 
stopped, or slowed down, to let them get in. 
It is one of the merriest sights of the war and 
redounds to the credit of human nature. Cigar-, 
ettes are passed round by those who have, to 
those who have not, with a generosity that re- 
minds one of nothing so much as that of the 
early Christians who "had all things common; 
and sold their possessions and goods, and 
parted them to all men, as every man had 
need." You need never go hungry while others 
have food. Officers are welcome at every mess 
they go near, and privates will get food in the 
servants' kitchen or may go shares with the 
men in any billet. It may be a man's own 



44 The Glamour of the Front 

fault that he took no food on the march, and 
his comrades may tell him so in plain strong 
language, but they will compel him to share 
what they have just the same. 

One wet night on the Somme I got lost in 
"Happy Valley" and could not find my regi- 
ment. Seeing a light in a tent, I made for it. 
It was a pioneers' tent, but they invited me to 
come in out of the storm and stay the night. 
They were at supper and had only a smaM 
supply of bully-beef, biscuits and strong tea; 
but they insisted on me sharing what they had. 
I was dripping with rain, and they gave me one 
of their blankets. One of them gave me a 
box to sleep on, while he shared his chum's. 
Some lost privates came in later wet to the 
skin, and the pioneers gave them all the eat- 
ables left over from supper, and shared out 
their blankets and clothes. It was pure Chris- 
tianity — whatever creeds they may think they 
believe. And it is the glamour of the Front. 
England feels cold and dull after It. Kindness 
and comradeship pervade the air In France. 
You feel that everyone Is a friend and brother. 
It will be pretty hard for chaplains to go back 
to their churches. They have been spoiled by 
too much kindness. How can they go back 
to the cold atmosphere of criticism and narrow 
judgments which prevail In so many churches 



The Glamour of the Front 45 

— that is, unless the war has brought changes 
there also ? And after preaching to dying men 
who listen as if their destiny depended upon 
their hearing, how can they go back to pulpits 
where large numbers in the congregations re- 
gard their messages as of less importance than 
dinner, and as merely supplying material for 
an exercise In more or less kindly criticism dur- 
ing the discussion of that meal? 

The glamour of the services at the Front! 
How the scenes are photographed on my 
heart! As a congregation sits in a church at 
home how stolid its features often are — how 
dull Its eyes ! One glance around and the 
preacher's heart sinks within him and his In- 
spiration flies away. Nothing is expected of 
him, and nothing particularly desired. People 
have come by force of habit, and not of need. 
But how the eyes of the soldiers In France glow 
and burn; how their features speak, and make 
the preacher speak in reply! Who could help 
being eloquent there I Such faces would make 
the dumb speak. One can see the effect of his 
words as plainly in their expressions as he can 
see the effect of wind on a cornfield. Every 
emotion from humor to concern leaps from 
the heart to the face as the subject touches 
them at, first this point of their life, then at that. 
The men's eyes are unforgettable. Months 



46 The Glamour of the Front 

afterwards they come vividly to mind, and one 
is back again answering the questions they 
silently ask, and seeing the look of content or 
gratitude that takes the place of the perplexed 
or troubled expression. Eyes are said to be 
the windows of the soul, and as I have spoken 
I have seen men's souls looking out. At home 
the windows are darkened and there seemed 
to be no souls behind the panes. The dwellers 
within the houses are busy with other matters, 
and will not come to the windows. The 
preacher feels like an organ-grinder in the 
street — those who hear do not heed nor come 
to the windows of the soul. In France there 
is a soul looking out at every window; and the 
preacher sings — for his words grow rhythmic 
— to his listeners of the love of God and of 
the love of women and children which make 
sweet this vale of tears and light man on his 
lone way beyorid the grave. 

One Sunday in hospital, when we heard the 
singing of a hymn in the ward below, a young 
officer, in the next bed, turned to me and said: 
"Why doesn't the chaplain hold a service for 
us? Why does he only hold them for the 
Tommies? We need them and want them, 
just as much as the Tommies. We are officers 
but we are also men." I passed the word to 
the chaplain, and he was a joyful man when 



The Glamour of the Front 47 

in the evening he gave us a service and the 
ofE'cers of the next ward asked the orderlies 
to carry them in. 

There is the same naturalness and spirit 
of fellowship between members of various 
churches. Many lasting friendships have been 
formed between chaplains of differing com- 
munions. There has been no change of creed 
but something greater, a change of spirit. 
They have been touched by the common spirit, 
and have lived and worked in free and happy 
fellowship. On my last Sunday In a hospital 
in France, the chaplain, a canon of the Church 
of England, Invited me to read the lesson at 
the morning parade service, and to administer 
the wine at Holy Communion. This I did; 
and a colonel who was present stayed behind 
to express to us both the pleasure which had 
been given to him by the sight of Anglican 
and Methodist churchmen serving together at 
the Lord's Table. 

To a chaplain not a little of the glamour of 
the Front Is found in this warm fellowship 
between men of differing creeds and varying 
religious communions. We have not knocked 
down our garden walls but we have taken off 
the cut glass that had been cemented on them 
by our fathers; and now we can lean over and 
talk to our neighbors. We have already found 



48 The Glamour of tlie Front 

that our neighbors are human beings, and quite 
normal. The chief difference between us seems 
to be that while one has an obsession for roses 
the other has an obsession for dahlias. On 
pansies, sweet peas and chrysanthemums we 
seem equally keen and exchange plants. A 
Roman Catholic officer who had been appointed 
to the Ulster Division told me that though he 
was received coldly at first, he had not been 
with the Division more than a few weeks when 
every officer in his regiment, and every soldier 
in his company, accepted him as cordially as 
if he were a Protestant. He was from Dublin 
and they from Belfast, but they did not allow 
it to make any difference, and feelings of the 
warmest loyalty and friendship sprang up. 
His Tommies would fight to the death by his 
side, as readily as around any Ulsterman; and 
he was just as popular in the officers' mess. 
When, he said. It passed the Irish Guards or 
any other Roman Catholic regiment, his regi- 
ment would sing some provoking song about 
"hanging the Pope with a good strong rope," 
and the Dublin regiment would reply with some 
song equally obnoxious and defiant; but whereas, 
in peace time, the songs would have caused a free 
fight to the accompaniment of bloodshed, now 
it caused nothing worse than laughter. The 
songs were just a bit of teasing such as every 



The Glamour of the Front 49 

regiment likes to regale another with — per- 
haps, too, a common memory of the dear 
country they have left behind. The men of 
Belfast and the men' of Dublin have learned 
to respect and value one another. They know 
that in a scrap with the enemy they can count 
on one another to the last drop of blood, for, 
whether from North or South, the Irish are 
"bonnie fighters." Of such are the miracles 
at the Front. 

Most of all, perhaps, the glamour of the 
Front is found in the nobility to which com- 
mon men rise. An artillery officer told me 
that he had in his battery a soldier who seemed 
utterly worthless. He was dirty In all his 
ways, and unreliable in character. In despair 
they made him sanitary orderly, that is, the 
scavenger whose duty It was to remove all 
refuse. One night the officer wanted a man 
to go on a perilous errand and there were few 
men available. Instantly this lad volunteered. 
The officer looked at him In amazement, and 
with a reverence born on the Instant. "No," 
he thought, "I will not let him go and get 
killed. I'll go myself." He told the lad so, 
and disappointment was plainly written on his 
features. 

"But, you'll let me come with you, sir?" he 
replied. 



50 The Glamour of the Front 

"Why should two risk their lives," asked 
the officer, "when one can do the job?" 

"But you might get wounded, sir," was the 
quick response; and they went together. 

An Irish officer told me of one man who 
seemed bad from top to toe. All the others 
had some redeeming feature but this man ap- 
peared not to possess any. He used the filthiest 
language and was dirty in his habits and dress. 
He was drunken and stole the officers' whisky 
out of the mess. He was unchaste, and had 
been in the hospital with venereal disease; 
and neither as man nor soldier was there any- 
thing good to say of him. The regiment was 
sent to France, and in due time took its place 
in the trenches; and then appeared in this man 
something that had never risen to the surface 
before. Wherever there were wounded and 
dying men he proved himself to be the noblest 
man In the regiment. When a man fell in 
No Man's Land, he was over the parapet in 
the twinkling of an eye to bring him in. No 
barrage could keep him away from the 
wounded. It was a sort of passion with him 
that nothing could restrain. To save others 
he risked his life scores of times. In rest- 
billets he would revert to some of his evil ways, 
but in the trenches he was the Greatheart of 
the regiment and, though he did not receive it, 



The Glamour of the Front 51 

he earned the Victoria Cross over and over 
again. There is a glamour at the Front that 
holds the heart with an irresistible grip. In 
the light of War's deathly fires the hearts of 
men are revealed and the black sheep often 
get their chance. Life is Intense and deep and 
men are drawn together by a common peril. 
They find the things that unite and forget the 
things that separate. 

"We haven't long to live," said Captain Ball 
joyfully, "but we live well while we do live," 
and in those words he expressed the glamour 
of the Front. Ball found, as thousands of his 
comrades-in-arms had found, that 

"One crowded hour of glorious life 
Is worth an age without a name." 



IV 
A WHITE HANDKERCHIEF 

IN his History of the Somme Campaign 
John Buchan quotes, from an official 
report, an incident which, though I have 
tried, I cannot get my imagination to beHeve. 
Probably the incident is a true one but, un- 
fortunately for me, my mind will not let it in. 
I cannot visualize it and the report is turned 
from the door as an impostor. The report 
states that in a certain attack our aeroplanes 
fired on the Germans in their trenches and that 
the enemy waved white handkerchiefs in token 
of surrender. Without the slightest difficulty 
I can imagine all except the white handker- 
chiefs. Where did they get them to wave? 
JMen in the firing trenches don't carry anything 
so conspicuous as white handkerchiefs. To 
draw one out in a thoughtless moment might 
bring a sniper's bullet, and there are risks 
enough without inviting more. I doubt if in 
any English regiment two white handkerchiefs 
could be found: and I have little expectation 

52 



A White Handkerchief 53 

that more could be found among the enemy. 
Furthermore, it is questionable, at this stage 
of the war, if a white handkerchief would be 
regarded as a sign of surrender. It might be 
taken as a taunt. 

There is nothing more remarkable in the war 
than the psychological change that has been 
wrought in white. A white feather used to 
be the badge of cowardice and a white flag 
the token of surrender. It is not so now. 
White has taken on a peculiar sacredness. If 
a new medal were to be struck of the same 
high value as the Victoria Cross it would 
probably be given a white ribbon, as the other 
has a red or (for the navy) blue. This 
change in the moral significance of white was 
brought home to me by an incident in a billet. 
I had gone to a barn to give the men some 
shirts and socks that had been sent to me. I 
stood on the steps, and like an auctioneer, 
offered my goods for acceptance. "Who wants 
a shirt? Who a scarf? Who wants this pair 
of mittens? Who a pair of socks?" Hands 
shot up at each question, and the fun grew 
fast and furious. Then I drew out and held 
up a white handkerchief. "A-ah! A-ah!" they 
cried wistfully in chorus. For a moment 
they stood gazing at it and forgot to raise 
their hands towards it; then, with a single 



54 A White Handkerchief 

movement, every hand shot up. Unwittingly 
I had stirred them to the depths; and I fek 
sorry for them. 

' The Magic Carpet of Baghdad Is not a 
fiction after all. In the twinkling of an eye 
my white handkerchief had carried every boy 
and man to his home, and placed him by the 
fireside. I saw it in their eyes and heard It 
in the sadness and wistfulness of their voices 
as they ejaculated "A-ah!" They had not 
seen a white handkerchief for months. The 
last they saw was at home. A vision of home 
flashed before their minds and they were back 
in the dear old days of peace when they used 
white handkerchiefs and khaki ones were un- 
known to them. If in battle they were to see 
Germans waving white handkerchiefs, I think 
it would make them savage and unwilling to 
r;ive quarter. They would think the enemy 
was taunting them with all they had lost. And 
they would be maddened by the thought that 
here were the very men who, by their war-lust, 
had caused them to lose it. For a German to 
wave a white handkerchief before a British 
soldier would be as dangerous as flaunting a 
red flag before a bull. It would bring death 
rather than pity. Anything of pure white Is 
rare at the front, and It has gradually taken 
on a meaning It never held before. About the 



A White Handkerchief 55 

only white thing we have is the paper we write 
home on, and that use of the color helps to 
sanctify it in the shrine of the heart. 

In the army it is a term of supreme praise 
to call a man white. When you say a comrade 
is a "white man" there is no more to be said. 
It is worth more than the Victoria Cross with 
its red ribbon, for it includes gallantry, and 
adds to it goodness. A man must be brave to 
be called white and he must be generous, noble 
and good. To reach whiteness is a great 
achievement. To be dubbed white is, in the 
army, like being dubbed knight at King Arthur's 
Court or canonized saint in the Church. He 
stands out among a soldier's comrades dis- 
tinct as a white handkerchief among khaki 
ones. 

I don't know where the term came from, 
but, wherever it may have tarried on the way, 
I think its footprints could be traced back to 
the Book of Revelation for its starting place. 
In the first chapter we have a picture of Christ 
as the first "White Man"— "His Head and 
His Hairs were white like wool, as white as 
snow." In the second chapter His faithful 
followers are given "a white stone, and In 
the stone a new name written." Is not the 
new name "White man"? In the third chapter 
we read of "a few names even in Sardis which 



56 A White Handkerchief 

have not defiled their garments; and they shall 
walk with Me in w^hite; for they are worthy." 
There, too, the Laodlceans are counseled to 
buy "white raiment." In the fourth chapter 
we see the four and twenty elders, sitting 
around the throne under the rainbow arch, 
"clothed in white raiment." In the sixth 
chapter we have the crowned King going 
"forth conquering, and to conquer" and He is 
sitting on "a white horse," that is. He uses 
"white" Instruments to carry out His con- 
quests. Death, in the same chapter, rides on 
a "pale" horse, but not a "white" one. Under 
the altar were the souls of the martyrs, "And 
white robes were given unto every one of 
them." And surely the climax Is reached when 
we read in the seventh chapter that " a great 
multitude, which no man could number, of all 
nations, and kindreds, and people and tongues, 
stood before the throne, and before the Lamb, 
clothed with white robes." So striking was 
the scene that one of the elders asked, "What 
are these which are arrayed In white robes? 
and whence came they?" And the answer is 
given, "These are they which came out of 
great tribulation, and have washed their robes, 
and made them white In the blood of the Lamb. 
Therefore are they before the throne of God." 
In the army white has come back to its 



A White Handkerchief 57 

ancient significance. The brave and noble 
martyrs of the early Church were given "white 
robes" and In the army to-day the brave and 
pure wear "white robes" In the eyes of their 
comrades. When Clifford Reed was killed by 
a shell at his Regimental Aid Post his colonel 
wrote of him that he was the "whitest man" 
he had ever known. He had done more than 
wear "the white flower of a blameless life." 
His virtues were positive, not merely negative. 
He wore a "white robe'' ; not a mere speck of 
white such as a white flower in a buttonhole 
would appear. White is a positive color, not 
a negative. Reed was more than "blameless," 
he was "white and all white." To our soldiers 
a white handkerchief speaks of home, and a 
"white man" speaks of honor and heroism 
and heaven. 



V 

THE SONGS OUR SOLDIERS SING 

THE necessity for poetry and song is fully 
and officially recognized by the military 
authorities at the Front. Every Divi- 
sion has its own concert party. These men are 
chosen out of the ranks because they can sing, 
and their one task is to furnish nightly concerts 
for the men. They are provided with a good 
hall, or tent, or open-air position; and they are 
given enough money to buy stage scenery and 
appropriate dress. Everybody attends the con- 
certs from the general to the private; and 
while the entertainments last, the war is for- 
gotten. A charge is made at the door but the 
balance sheet is published for all ranks to see; 
and the profits are distributed among the Divi- 
sional charities. 

Among the many Divisional Concert Parties 
may be named "The Bow Bells," "The Duds," 
"The Follies," "The Whizz-bangs," "The 
Fancies" and, "The Giddigoats." But, after 
all, the singing in the concert rooms is but a 

58 



The Songs Our Soldiers Sing 59 

small fraction of the singing one hears in the 
Army. On every march, in every billet and 
mess, there is the sound of singing. Nor must 
the singing at our religious services and in the 
Y. M. C. A. huts be forgotten. Song seems 
to be the great renewer of hope and courage. 
It is the joy bringer. Moreover, it is an ex- 
pression of emotions that can find no other 
voice. 

There is no real difference between the songs 
sung by the officers, and those sung by the men. 
All attend the concerts and all sing on the 
march. The same songs do for both com- 
manders and commanded, and I have heard 
the same songs in the men's billets as in the 
officers' mess-rooms. How real these songs are 
to the soldiers is indicated by one striking omis- 
sion. There are no patriotic songs at the 
Front. Except the National Anthem rendered 
on formal occasions, I have never, in eighteen 
months, heard a single patriotic song. The 
reason is not far to seek. The soldiers' 
patriotism calls for no expression in song. 
They are expressing it night and day in the 
endurance of hardship and wounds — In the 
risking of their lives. Their hearts are satis- 
fied with their deeds, and songs of such a char- 
acter become superfluous. In peace-time they 
sing their love of the homeland, but In war- 



60 The Songs Our Soldiers Sing 

time they suffer for her and are content. They 
would never think of singing a patriotic song 
as they march into battle. It would be painting 
the lily and gilding refined gold. Are not their 
deathless deeds, songs for which they make a 
foil by singing some inconsequential and evan- 
escent song such as, "There's something in the 
sea-side air." 

On analysis I should say that there are five 
subjects on which our soldiers sing. First, there 
are Nonsense Songs or, if you prefer it', songs 
of soldier-philosophy. They know that no 
theory will explain the war; it is too big a thing 
for any sheet of philosophy to cover. It has 
burst in on our little hum-drum life like a col- 
liding planet. The thing to do is not to evolve 
a theory as to how the planet got astray but 
to clear up the mess it has made. Our soldiers 
show this sense of the vastness of war-happen- 
ings, by singing of things having no real im- 
portance at all, and keeping steadily at their 
duties. The path of duty is, they find, the only 
path of sanity. The would-be war philosopher 
they put on one side. The war is too big for 
him. Let him leave his explanation of the war 
and lend a hand to bring it to an end. So they 
sing, with laughing irony, 

"We're here because we're here, because 
We're here, because we're here." 



The Songs Our Soldiers Sing 61 



Or, 



"While you've got a lucifer to light your fag, 
Smile, boys, that's the style. 
What's the use of worrying? 
It never was worth while, 
So pack up your troubles in your old kit-bag 
And smile, smile, smile." 

Another favorite is, 

"Oh, there was a little hen and she had a wooden leg, 
The best little hen that ever laid an egg, 
And she laid more eggs than any hen on the farm. 
And another little drink wouldn't do us any harm." 

I have seen them dancing round some old piano 
singing, 

"Oh, that fascinating Bow Bells' glide, 
It's a captivating Bow Bells' slide. 
There's a rumor that the puma does it now, 
Monkeys have taken to it, 
Leopards and lions do it. 
All the elephants wear dancing shoes, 
They keep hopping with the kangaroos; 
Hear them chatter, it's a matter for some talk; 
Now the Jungle's got the Bow Bells' walk." 

The second class of song is the Love Song, 
of a more or less serious character. The Tom- 
mies came out of England singing "Tipperary," 
but they dropped it in France, and the only one 
on whose lips I have heard it was a little French 



62 Tlie Songs Our Soldiers Sing 

boy sitting on the tail of a cart. The chorus 
alone gave it popularity for it was the expres- 
sion, ready to hand, of a long farewell; and 
with its "long long way to go" showed that, 
like Kitchener, the soldiers were not deceived 
by hopes of an early peace. 

Now another song with verses more expres- 
sive of their sentiments has taken its place. 
The chorus runs: 

"There's a long, long trail a-winding 

Into the land of my dreams, 
Where the nightingales are singing 

And a white moon beams; 
There's a long, long night of waiting 

Until my dreams all come true; 
Till the day when I'll be going down 

That long, long trail with you." 

Then the mood changes, and we hear the lads 
piping out, 

"Taffy's got his Jennie in Glamorgan, 

Sandy's got his Maggie in Dundee, 
While Michael O'Leary thinks of his dearie 

Far across the Irish Sea. 
Billy's got his Lily up in London, 

So the boys march on with smiles; 
For every Tommy's got a girl somewhere 

In the dear old British Isles." 

Again the mood veers round, and we hear, 



The Songs Our Soldiers Sing 63 

"Every little while I feel so lonely, 

Every little while I feel so blue, 
I'm always dreaming, I'm always scheming, 

Because I want you, and only you. 
Every little while my heart is aching, 

Every little while I miss your smile, 
And all the time I seem to miss you; 
I want to, want to kiss you, 

Every, every, every little while." 

Here Is part of a song I have heard sung, 
many and many a time, by young officers and 
men whose voices are now silent in death : 

"If you were the only girl in the world, 
And I were the only boy, 

Nothing else would matter in the world to-day. 
We could go on loving in the same old way; 
A Garden of Eden just made for two, 
With nothing to mar our joy; 
I would say such wonderful things to you. 
There would be such wonderful things to do, 
If you were the only girl in the world, 
And I were the only boy." 

Sometimes the imagination will wander into 
the days that are to be — for some — and they 
sing, 

"We don't want a lot of flags flying. 

We don't want your big brass bands; 
We don't want a lot of speechifying. 

And we don't want a lot of waving hands; 
We don't want a lot of interfering. 

When we've safely crossed the foam; 
But we do want to find the girls we left behind, 

When we all come marching home." 



64 The Songs Our Soldiers Sing 

Will the girls remember! The words are 
not without tragedy. How deeply some of the 
men love may perhaps never be realized by 
those at home. The longing of their hearts is, 
at times, almost unbearable. A captain, past 
middle life, took my arm one day and led me 
aside. He was, he said, a little anxious about 
himself, for he was getting into the habit of 
taking more drink than he was wont to take. 
He had been taking it when he felt lonely and 
depressed to ease the longing of his heart. 

"I never touch it at home," he said, "the 
society of my dear little wife is all the stimulant 
I need. I would give the world to be with 
her now — ^just to sit in my chair and watch her 
at her sewing or knitting. The separation is 
too much for me and, you know, it has lasted 
nearly three years now." 

I have caught this yearning in more than one 
of the songs our soldiers sing, but especially in 
the following, which is called "Absent": 

"Sometimes, between long shadows on the grass, 
The little truant wares of sunlight pass; 
My eyes grow dim with tenderness, the while 
Thinking I see thee, thinking I see thee smile. 

"And sometimes in the twilight gloom, apart, 
The tall trees whisper, whisper heart to heart; 
From my fond lips the eager answers fall. 
Thinking I hear thee, thinking I hear thee call." 



The Songs Our Soldiers Sing 65 

The men's thoughts pass easily from the 
sweetheart to the mother who bore them, and 
we have a third class, the Home Song. I 
have been awakened in the night by men, going 
up to the line, singing "Keep the Home Fires 
Burning." It is very thrilling to hear in the 
dead of night, when every singer is within range 
of the enemy's guns. 

Another great favorite is, 

"They built a little garden for the rose, 

And they called it Dixie-land; 
They built a summer breeze to keep the snows 

Far away from Dixie-land; 
They built the finest place I've known, 

When they built my home sweet home; 
Nothing was forgotten in the land of cotton, 

From the clover to the honey-comb, 
And then they took an angel from the skies 

And they gave her heart to me. 
She had a bit of heaven in her eyes 

Just as blue as blue can be; 
They put some fine spring chickens in the land, 

And taught my Mammy how to use a frying pan. 
They made it twice as nice as paradise, 

And they called it Dixie-land." 

Being Londoners, the following song called 
"Leave" never fails in its appeal to our Divi- 
sion: 

, "I'm so delighted, I'm so excited, 

With my folks I'm going to be united. 



6Q The Songs Our Soldiers Sing 

The train's departing, 'twill soon be starting; 

I'll see my mother, my dad and my baby brother. 

My! How I'll meet them. My! how I'll greet them. 

What a happy happy day. 

Just see that bustle, I'd better hustle, 

Good-bye — so long — can't stay — 



Chorus 

"I'm on my way back to dear old Shepherd's Bush, 
That's the spot where I was born, 
Can't you hear the porter calling, 

Queen's Road, Piccadilly, Marble Arch and Bond Street? 
Oh, I'll not hesitate, I'll reach the gate; 
Through the crowd I mean to push, 
Find me a seat anywhere — please anywhere. 
Tram, train, tube, 'bus I don't care — 
For mother and daddy are waiting there — 
In dear old Shepherd's Bush." 

On the eve of one big battle, a soldier 
handed me a letter in which he gave me the 
addresses of his father and his sweetheart, so 
that I could write to them if he fell. 

"In the last battle," he said, "one of my 
brothers was killed and another wounded. If I 
fall I shall die without regrets and with a heart 
content; but it will go hard with those at home; 
and I want you to break the news gently. 
These are terrible times for those at home." 
"These are terrible times for those at home." 
That is their constant refrain, and it finds an 
echo in a song often sung by them. 



The Songs Our Soldiers Sing 67 

"It's a long long way to my home In Kentucky, 

Where the blue-bells grow 'round the old cabin door; 
It's a long, long way and I'll be mighty lucky 

When I see my dear old mammy once more. 
So weep no more, my lady, 

Just brush those tears away; 
It's a long long way to my home in Kentucky, 

But I'm bound to get there some day." 

But the chief favorite of all Home Songs is, 
I think, the following: 

"There's an old-fashioned house in an old-fashioned street; 

In a quaint little old-fashioned town; 
There's a street where the cobble stones harass the feet, 

As it straggles up hill and then down ; 
And, though to and fro through the world I must go. 

My heart while it beats in my breast, 
Where e'er I may roam, to that old-fashioned home 

Will fly like a bird to its nest. 

"In that old-fashioned house in that old-fashioned street, 

Dwell a dear little old-fashioned pair; 
I can see their two faces so tender and sweet. 

And I love every wrinkle that's there. 
I love ev'ry mouse in that old-fashioned house 

In the street that runs up hill and down ; 
Each stone and each stick, ev'ry cobble and brick, 

In that quaint little old-fashioned town." 

The charm of the Army is its comradeship. 
Our soldiers have left their homes and friends 
but they have found new friends, and some of 
the friendships have become very precious. 
Men slept side by side in barn and trench, 



68 The Songs Our Soldiers Sing 

cooked their rations at the same Httle wood fire, 
and stood together in the hour of danger and 
imminent death. Many of them owe their Hves 
to their comrades. There are few songs that 
express this wonderful comradeship, but there 
is one that is known and sung through the 
army. It represents the Songs of Comrade- 
ship : 

"When you come to the end of a perfect day, 

And you sit alone with your thought, 
While the chimes ring out with a carol gay, 

For the joy that the day has brought; 
Do you think what the end of a perfect day 

Can mean to a tired heart, 
When the sun goes down with a flaming ray, 

And the dear friends have to part? 

"Well, this is the end of a perfect day, 

Near the end of a journey too; 
But it leaves a thought that is big and strong, 

With a wish that is kind and true. 
For mem'ry has painted this perfect day 

With colors that never fade; 
And we find at the end of a perfect day 

The soul of a friend ive've made." 

The fifth class of song Is that of the Inner 
life. It is the Religious Hymn. The soldiers 
are extremely fond of hymns in their services. 
You cannot give them too many. "Rock of 
Ages," "Jesus lover of my soul," "Fight the 
good fight," "There is a green hill," "At even 



The Songs Our Soldiers Sing 69 

ere the sun was set," "O God our help in ages 
past," and "Eternal Father strong to save" 
cannot be chosen too often. But there are two 
hymns which have stood out above all others; 
they are "Abide with me," and "When I sur- 
vey the wondrous Cross." 

There is nothing written by the hand of man 
which can compete with these two in the bless- 
ing and strength which they have brought to our 
soldiers, especially during an offensive when 
death has cast his shadow over the hearts of 
all. During the bitterest weeks in the Somme 
fighting there was scarcely a service in which 
we did not sing "When I survey the wondrous 
Cross." With its assurance of redemption it 
gave comfort in the face of death. It also 
gave, for an example, the Supreme Sacrifice. 

Some of the songs I have quoted look bare 
and ungainly as trees in winter, but when the 
musician has clothed them with music and the 
singer added to them a touch of his own per- 
sonality they are fair as trees in summer. Still 
the fact remains that none of these songs will 
live on their own merits. They are not born 
to Immortality. Like the daisies they have 
their day and pass away to make room for 
others. It is best so. There is not room in 
the world for everything to be immortal, and 
the transient has a work of its own to do. 



70 The Songs Our Soldiers Sing 

The charm and rare beauty of the English 
countryside are due to the transience of its 
flowers and foliage and little of the evergreen 
is enough. We tire of the eternal. The 
transient songs I have quoted here have been 
meat and drink to our soldiers in the most ter- 
rible war ever waged. They may be poor stuff 
in comparison with our classic songs but a good 
appetite can get nourishment out of plain food 
and grow strong on It. For the purpose in 
hand these songs have been better than the 
classics; otherwise they would not have been 
chosen. There is a time and place for all 
things. The robin may not be compared with 
the nightingale but It is not the less welcome, 
for it sings when the nightingale is silent. Our 
soldiers' songs will die, some are already dead, 
but they have done their work and justified 
their existence. They have given pleasure and 
strength to men as they went out to do im- 
mortal deeds. No wounded soldier, or parched 
traveler, thinks lightly of a cup of water be- 
cause it perished in the using; and so it Is with 
the songs our soldiers sing. 



m 

EASTER SUNDAY 

NIGHT and day for a week, the fearful 
bombardment continued. Our guns 
were everywhere, and belching forth 
without Intermission. Dumps of shells were 
almost as common as sheaves in a corn-field, 
and processions of ammunition-wagons piled 
the shells up faster than the gorging guns 
could take them. The noise was something be- 
yond Imagination. It was as though all the 
devils in hell had come out to demoniacally 
celebrate the end of the world. We were living 
— two transport officers and I — in an empty 
farm-house that, some time before we came in, 
had been a target for direct hits. One shell 
had gone through the roof, and another 
through the gable wall. The windows had 
been shattered, and the garden and fields were 
pitted with shell-holes. Our first care had been 
to look at the cellar, but we had decided, if 
things became too hot, to make for the open 
fields. We all slept in the same room, and 

71 



72 Easter Sunday 

were at times wakened up by "an arrival" and 
passed an opinion as to its distance. If, for 
a time, none came nearer, we turned over and 
went to sleep again, for a man must sleep even 
though it be on the edge of a volcano. 

One morning the servants found a shell nose- 
cap beneath the window — just that, and noth- 
ing more. The week was wearing on. An- 
other morning some of the 7th Middlesex 
Regiment were in the baths in the village over 
the way, and a company of the London Scot- 
tish was passing by. Two shells fell in the 
road. The bathers scampered out of the bath 
and ran naked, here and there, for shelter; 
the Scottish "scattered"; but some forty-five 
soldiers, mostly kilted, lay in the road dead 
or wounded. In the dead of night a party of 
machine gunners, just returned from the firing- 
trench, stood outside their billet in our village 
square debating if they should make a cup of 
tea before turning in to sleep. A shell de- 
cided the matter, and, next morning, I laid 
two of them to rest in the little cemetery, and 
the others stood by as mourners. 

The week of terror reached its crisis on the 
Sunday — an Easter Sunday never to be for- 
gotten. The infantry of the Brigade had been 
away to a camp, beyond range, for a week's 
rest. They had now returned ready for the 



Easter Sunday 73 

battle. Three of the regiments had taken up 
their positions in the reserve trenches, but my 
own regiment was quartered in the fatal vil- 
lage. The day dawned bright and fair, but 
its smiles were the smiles of a deceiver. The 
Germans had decided on the destruction of the 
village, a sort of devil's "hail-and-farewell" 
before being driven back at the points of 
bayonets. We were awakened by the firing of 
machine-guns over our heads, and rushed to the 
door to see a fight in the air. High up in the 
blue, two aeroplanes circled about for posi- 
tions of vantage, and then rushed at one another 
like hawks in mortal combat. A silence fol- 
lowed. Then one rose and made off towards 
the battle-line but fell to a shot of our gun- 
ners before it could reach safety. The other, 
with its petrol-tank on fire, was planing down 
to earth. Down and down an invisible spiral 
staircase it seemed to rush, while the golden 
fire burnt at its vitals, and a trailing cloud 
of smoke marked its path of doom. Breath- 
lessly we watched Its descent. It was under 
perfect control, but Its path to the ground was 
too long and spiral, and the faster It rushed 
through the air the greater the draught be- 
came and the more madly the flames leapt up. 
Every second was precious and the certainty 
of its doom made us sick. We saw the body 



74 Easter Sunday 

of the observer fall out, and still the flaming 
machine pursued its course. Then the wings 
fell away and twirled to the ground like 
feathers, while the engine and the pilot dropped 
like a stone. When the bodies were picked 
up, it was found that the observer had been 
shot through the head, and that the pilot, with 
his dead comrade behind him, had worked the 
wheel until the furious encroaching flame had 
swept over him, and robbed him of mortal 
hfe. 

Shells were now dropping in the village 
every few minutes. Our farm-house was on the 
right wing, and we stood watching the bom- 
bardment. With each burst there rose a cloud 
of black smoke and red brick-dust, and we 
knew that another cottage has been destroyed. 
Then the shells began to creep round to the 
right as if the enemy was feeling for the 
bridge over which the ammunition wagons 
were passing. On one side of the little bridge 
was a white bell-tent, and we watched the 
shells dropping within a few feet of it with- 
out destroying it. Between the tent and our 
street lay a stagnant pool, and we saw about 
a dozen shells fall in its water. The range 
was lengthening and It seemed as if some In- 
visible octopus were stretchinj^ out Its feelers 
towards us. A shell smashed against the 



Easter Sunday 75 

farm-house at the bottom of our street. The 
deadly thing was coming nearer. Some of our 
sergeants were in a farm-house a few doors 
away, and, hearing a shell fall in the field 
between them and the pool, they came to the 
decision that the moment had come "to scat- 
ter," but they were too late. It would have 
been better had they stayed indoors. As they 
rushed out a shell burst over the yard three 
of them fell to the ground dead, and three 
more were blown back into the house by the 
force of the explosion. The coping stone of 
the outhouse where the shell burst was blown 
away and three ragged seams were scored on 
the green doorway of the yard outside which 
the three lads lay dead. One of them had, 
ten days before, shown me to my billet thirty 
yards farther up. He acted as interpreter to 
the regiment and as he had not to go into the 
line, we thought that he was one of those who 
would see the end of the war. Yet there he 
lay. 

But the worst calamity of the day was yet 
to befall. Some fifteen or sixteen ammunition 
wagons, unable to get through the village, had 
halted in the Square — "Wipers Square" it had 
been named. Each wagon was loaded with 
nine-point-two shells. An enemy-shot fell on a 
wagon and set it on fire; then the village be- 



76 Easter Sunday 

came like unto Sodom and Gomorrah on their 
day of doom. One or two drivers bravely 
stuck to their wagons, and got them out but 
the rest of the wagons were lost. The scene 
that followed was indescribable. Dore could 
never have pictured such horrors. The wagons 
all caught fire and their loads of shells began 
to explode. We stood out in the fields and 
watched the conflagration, while all the time 
the Germans continued to shell the village. 
The large village-hall and the houses on each 
side of the square were utterly destroyed. 
Great explosions sent fragments of wagons and 
houses sky-high, and showers of missiles fell 
even where we stood. The fore part of one 
wagon was blown on to the roof of a house. 
Houses caught fire and blazed all afternoon. 
Some machine-gunners joined us and told how, 
when choking smoke began to penetrate into 
their cellar they had to rush through the square 
and its bursting shells to preserve their lives. 
A German shell burst in a billet where a platoon 
of our men were sheltering in the cellar, and 
those who were not killed by the shell were 
crushed to death by the fall of the house. 
Another shell hit the roof of the house In the 
cellar of which was our Advanced Dressing 
Station for the morrow's battle. Two order- 
lies who happened to be in the street were 



Easter Sunday 77 

killed, and the colonel was knocked down. In 
the cellars of almost every house were soldiers 
or civilians, and all day the ammunition wagons 
continued burning; shell after shell getting red 
hot and exploding. 

All day the German bombardment continued 
and, amid a terrific din, our own gunners re- 
turned a score or more for every one received. 
By the bridge another long line of loaded am- 
munition wagons stood for two hours, and 
though shells were bursting close by, not one 
hit the wagons. The drivers stood by them 
and, as soon as the road was cleared, got them 
away to the guns. Yet, while the Square was 
burning and the German shells falling, hun- 
dreds of men from the London regiments en- 
tered the village from the right, and crossed 
the bridge to stack their packs so as to be 
ready for the coming battle. They walked in 
single file and with wide gaps between, but not 
a man ran or quickened his pace. My blood 
tingled with pride at their courage and anger 
at their carelessness. What would make a 
British soldier run? An officer was walking 
near the pool. A shell fell near enough for 
fragments to kill him, but he merely looked 
round, stopped to light a cigarette and walked 
leisurely on as if nothing had happened. 
Three men stood with their backs against a 



78 Easter Sunday 

small building near the bridge as if sheltering 
from the rain. Several shells fell uncom- 
fortably near, so, concluding that the rain had 
changed its direction, they moved round the 
corner. And it was not till more shells had 
fallen near them that they condescended to 
move away altogether. 

Yet this was not bravado for, so far as they 
knew, no one was watching them. It was due 
to a certain dignity peculiar to our fighting 
man. He is too proud to acknowledge defeat. 
He is a man, and whether any one is watching 
or not, he is not going to run away from a 
shell. Hundreds of lives must have been lost 
through this stubborn pride but, on the other 
hand, thousands of lives must have been saved 
by it, for it makes the Army absolutely proof 
against panic, than which, nothing is so fatal 
in war. In eighteen months on the Front I 
have never seen or heard of a single case of 
panic either with many or few. Our soldiers 
are always masters of themselves. They have 
the coolness to judge what is the wisest thing 
to do in the circumstances, and they have the 
nerve to carry it out. They run unnecessary 
risks through pride but never through panic. 
All that day on the bridge, a military police- 
man stood at his post of duty. Like Vesuvius 
of old the exploding shells in the Square sent 



Easter Sunday 79 

up their deadly eruption, and like the Roman 
sentry at Pompeii, he stood at his post. As 
he stood there I saw a young French woman 
leave her house and pass him on the bridge. 
She was leaving the village for a safer place 
but she seemed quite composed and carried a 
basket on her left arm. 

While our village was being destroyed we 
were startled by a tremendous explosion a few 
miles away; and looking to our left we saw 
a huge tongue of flame leap up to the sky, 
followed by a wonderful pillar of smoke which 
stood rigid for some moments like a monster 
tower of Babel reaching up to the heavens. 
Evidently a dump of cordite had been fired 
by an enemy shell. Farther off still, another 
dump was on iire. Time and again, bright 
flames leapt from the ground only to be smoth- 
ered again by dense curling masses of smoke. 
It seemed as if our whole front was on fire, 
and news came to us that our main road of 
communication had been heavily shelled, and 
was now strewn with dead horses and men. 
Before the battle of the Somme there were no 
signs and portents so terrible as these. It was 
evident that the enemy knew what was in store 
for him on the morrow, and was preparing 
against It, but if the prelude was so magnificent 
in Its terror, what would the battle be ? Imagin- 



80 Easter Sunday 

ation staggered under the contemplation. By 
four o'clock the bombardment was almost at an 
end, and nearly all the shells in the Square had 
exploded. The soldiers began to creep out of 
the cellars. On passing through the Square we 
were amazed at the sight. In fact the Trans- 
port Officer passed through at my side without 
recognizing the place. At the entrance was a 
team of six dead mules lying prone on the 
ground and terribly torn. Two rows of houses 
had disappeared, leaving mere heaps of stones 
in their places. The pavement was torn up, 
and the wrecks of the ammunition wagons lay 
scattered about. Two houses were still burn- 
ing. Our colonel and adjutant we found by 
the side of the stream. They had been in a 
cellar near the Square all day but, fortunately, 
they were little the worse for the experience. 
They were giving orders for the assembling 
of the scattered regiment. 

By this time, civilians were leaving the cel- 
lars, and with armfuls of household goods 
hastening from the village. To them it seemed 
the end of all things — the day of doom. Some 
of them had slight wounds and as they passed 
us they cried mournfully, "Finis, Messieurs, 
Finis." All was lost. This exodus of the 
despairing civilians was the saddest sight of the 
day. By sunset the regiment had been gathered 



Easter Sunday 81 

together — all except the wounded who had 
been sent to the Main Dressing Station and 
the dead who had been placed side by side and 
covered with blankets. Most of our officers 
and men had lost all their belongings, but in 
the twilight they marched out of the village 
and took their places in the reserve trenches 
near the other battalions. These had suffered 
no losses. They had been saved the long day's 
agony. Early in the morning the battle was 
to begin but the Westminsters knew that no 
worse experience could await them than that 
through which they had already passed. 

Next morning I buried, near the ruined 
church, the bodies of the sergeants who had 
been killed a few doors from us; and on the 
following day I laid to rest, side by side, in one 
long grave, two drivers who had died at their 
posts in the Square, together with an officer 
and twenty men belonging to the ist Queen's 
Westminster Rifles. 



VII 
"NOW THE DAY IS OVER" 

ACHICOURT is a little village about 
a mile out of Arras. It has two 
churches, one Roman Catholic, the 
other, Lutheran. The former church has been 
utterly destroyed by German shells, and will 
have to be rebuilt from the foundations. The 
Lutheran church was less prominently placed, 
and its four walls are still standing. Its 
humility has saved it, but, as by fire. All its 
windows are gone, and its walls are torn and 
scarred by fragments of shells. Most of Its 
slates have been destroyed and the rain pours 
through the roof. But, on dry days, and until 
the Battle of Arras, It was a beloved little 
place for services. It stood, however, at a 
corner of the village Square, and the Square 
was destroyed by hundreds of exploding shells 
on Easter Sunday. As I passed it in the after- 
noon of that day, and saw how it had suffered, 
my heart grew sad within me. 

Often it had sheltered us at worship, and 

82 



"Now the Day Is Over" 83 

many of our most sacred memories will, for 
ever, cling like ivy to its walls. The door was 
smashed in, the vestibule torn into strips as 
by lightning. The pews were strewn on the 
floor with their backs broken; even the frames 
of the windows had been blown out. There 
was a little portable organ that we had used 
with our hymns, and it lay mutilated on the 
floor like a slaughtered child. The floor was 
white with plaster, as when a sharp frost has 
brought low the cherry blossom. Never again, 
I thought, should I gather my men for worship 
within its humble, hospitable walls. One more 
of the beautiful and sacred things of life had 
perished in this all-devouring war. Only the 
fields remained, and there all my future services 
must be held. 

But "fears may be liars" and so mine proved. 
I had reckoned without the man in khaki — - 
that master of fate whose head "beneath the 
bludgeonings of chance, is bloody but un- 
bowed." In a week he had cleared the Square 
of its dead — mules and men — filled in its 
craters, and cleared away the debris that 
blocked the roads. He was even removing the 
fallen houses in order to mend the roads with 
their bricks and stones; and he had thrown 
together all the scraps of Iron for salvage. 
There I found, lying side by side, the burned 



84 "Now the Day Is Over" 

tin-soldiers of the children; officers' revolvers 
which, being loaded, had exploded in the heat; 
bayonets and rifle-barrels of the men; broken 
sewing machines of the women. He had taken 
in hand, too, the little church. Sacking was 
spread across the windows; the remnants of 
the little organ were carefully placed under 
the pulpit where they lay like the body of a 
saint beneath an altar; the floor was swept of 
its fallen plaster. The pews were repaired and 
placed in order again, and a new door was 
made. Even timber was brought for a new 
vestibule. The wood was rough and un- 
painted — Tommy had to use what he could get 
— but it served. The twisted railings were 
drawn away from the entrance, and, on the 
following Sunday, we were back in our old 
sanctuary. We felt that it was more sacred 
than ever. These are the deeds of our fight- 
ing-man that make us love him so much, and 
these are the acts of kindness and common 
sense that make us admire our commanders. 
Both officers and men have the heart of a lion 
in the hour of battle, the gentleness of a lamb 
when it is over. Whatever their circumstances, 
they cannot cease to be gentlemen, nor forget 
the fathers that begat them. 

Let him who doubts the future of England 
come hither. He will see the past through the 



"Now the l^ay Is Over" 85 

present, and the future through both. Tommy's 
eyes are the crystal gazing-glasses in which he 
will discern the future. Tommy is living his- 
tory and the prophecy of the future made 
flesh. The pessimists have not seen Tommy 
here, and that is why they are what they are. 
"Age cannot wither nor custom stale" his in- 
finite freshness and resource. He is a sword 
that the rust of time cannot corrode, nor the 
might of an enemy break, and he will be found 
flashing wherever there are wrongs to right and 
weak to be defended. On Easter Sunday he 
was calmly enduring the horror of the German 
bombardment and the explosions of his own 
dump of shells. On Easter Monday he was 
driving the Germans at the point of his bayonet, 
or accepting their surrender at the doors of 
their dug-outs! On Easter Tuesday and 
Wednesday he was repairing a little French 
chapel for worship. Take him which day 
you will, and you will find him mighty hard to 
match. To me he is the king of men, and 
his genius, cheerfulness and resourcefulness be- 
yond the range of explanations. 

After some weeks of fighting we had come 
to our last Sunday in Achicourt, and were 
gathered for the evening service. The chapel 
was jammed with officers and men, but not all 
my flock was there. There was Rifleman Gib- 



86 "Now the Day Is Over" 

son absent. He was carrying his beloved 
Lewis gun in an attack when a bullet struck 
him, and he died, as his comrades report, with 
a smile upon his face. Before going into the 
battle he had given me his father's address 
and thanked me for the spiritual help he had 
received at the services. It was his farewell 
to me, and his father now has the penciled 
words. And Rifleman Stone was absent, too. 
He was but a boy, and beautiful with youth 
and goodness. His comrades loved him as 
David loved Jonathan, with a love passing the 
love of women. Every day, they told me in 
their grief, he knelt in the trench to say his 
prayers and to read his Bible. One night after 
praying he laid him down and slept. He had 
often sung the evening hymn : 

"Jesus protects; my fears, be gone! 
What can the Rock of Ages move? 
Safe in Thy arm I lay me down, 
Thy everlasting arms of love. 

"While Thou art intimately nigh, 
Who, then, shall violate my rest? 
Sin, earth, and hell I now defy; 
I lean upon my Saviour's breast. 

"Me for Thine own Thou lov'st to take, 

In time and in eternity, 
Thou never, never wilt forsake 
A helpless soul that trusts in Thee." 



"Now the Day Is Over" 87 

And as he slept, God took him from the 
misery of this world — took him without wak- 
ing him. His broken-hearted comrades gath- 
ered together his broken body, and a friend, 
a Congregational preacher, who, though over 
military age, was serving in the ranks, read the 
burial service over him. Lance-corporal Gil- 
bert James was missing, too — he whom I had 
known to lose his breakfast to attend a service 
in a cold, dirty, old barn. And many others 
were absent whose departure to the Land be- 
yond our mortal reach was to us like the putting 
out of stars. 

We were leaving the Arras front and we 
sang a hymn for those who had taken our 
places : 

"O Lord of Hosts, Whose mighty arm 
In safety keeps 'mid war's alarm, 
Protect our comrades at the Front 
Who bear of war the bitter brunt. 
And in the hour of danger spread 
Thy sheltering wings above each head. 

"In battle's harsh and dreadful hour. 
Make bare Thine arm of sovereign power, 
And fight for them who fight for Thee, 
And give to justice, victory. 

O in the hour of danger spread 

Thy sheltering wings above each head. 



88 "Now the Day Is Over" 

"If by the way they wounded lie, 
O listen to their plaintive cry; 
And rest them on Thy loving breast, 
O Thou on Whom the cross was pressed; 
And in the hour of danger shed 
Thy glorious radiance o'er each head. 

"When pestilence at noonday wastes. 
And death in triumph onward hastes, 
O Saviour Christ, remember Nain, 
And give us our beloved again. 
In every ward of sickness tread. 
And lay Thy hand upon each head. 

"O Friend and Comforter divine, 
Who makest light at midnight shine. 
Give consolation to the sad 
Who in the days of peace were glad. 
And in the hour of sorrow spread 
Thy wings above each drooping head. 

Amen." 

I had to find a new voice to start it, for our 
little organ had been destroyed by a shell, 
and our precentor way lying in a grave beside 
his Medical Aid Post at Guemappe. When, 
on Good Friday, we had sung the hymn be- 
fore, the regiment returned from rest billets to 
the line, he had started the tune. His love 
for music was second only to that of risking 
his life for the wounded. In one of his letters 
given me to censor, he had written, "How nice 
it will be to be back in my old place in the 
choir." But he was destined not to go back. 



"Now the Day Is Over" 89 

His path was onward and upward, and his 
place was in the heavenly choir. I had seen 
it in his large, tender blue eyes. There was 
in them an expression as if he had seen "the 
land that is very far off." I felt that he was 
chosen as a sacrifice — that the seal of God was 
on his forehead. 

Still, we had to sing, though his voice was 
silent. So we sang — several tunes, for hymns 
seemed all our spirits needed. What need 
was there for a sermon when we had hymns? 
We left the rag-time type of hymn and sang 
the real deep things that come from men's 
hearts, and ever after are taken up by their 
fellows to express their deepest aspirations and 
experiences. The ruined chapel vibrated with 
music, and men, I am told, stood in the street 
to listen while "Jesus, Lover of my Soul," 
"Rock of Ages," "When I Survey the Won- 
drous Cross" and "The Sands of Time are 
Sinking" told of the faith and love that lift 
up the heart. We also sang "Abide with Me." 
After hearing us sing it one night, a Roman 
Catholic officer in the regiment, a Canadian 
and one of the bravest, most beloved men that 
ever walked, told me that he was a great- 
grandson of the author. He is in hospital 
now with severe wounds, but his men were 
present. 



90 "Now the Day Is Over" 

"Couldn't we take up a collection for the 
repair of the chapel when peace comes?" 
whispered a rifleman; "it would be a sort of 
thanksgiving for the good times we have had 
in it, and for the kindness of the congregation 
in giving us the use of it so freely." 

I put the suggestion to the men and they 
voted for it with enthusiasm. Two of them 
went round with their caps and out of their 
shallow purses the big-hearted fellows gave 
over I GO francs. In the name of the men I 
presented the full caps to a lady of the con- 
gregation who was present, and she was 
moved to tears. The time was quickly passing, 
so I mounted the pulpit and told them of 
words spoken after the earth's first great 
trouble, when the black wings of death had 
cast their shadow over every home : "And God 
said, I do set my bow in the cloud, and it 
shall be for a token of a covenant between me 
and the earth. And it shall come to pass, when 
I bring a cloud over the earth, that the bow 
shall be seen in the cloud." 

"God," I said, "has made a covenant with 
man, for man is His neighbor and subject; and 
there must be an understanding between them, 
if there is to be peace and happiness. Man 
must know God's will or he will grieve Him 
and there will be discord and pain. Also, man 



"Now the Day Is Over" 91 

must know God's intentions concerning him, 
and something of His ways, or else he will live 
in fear and dread of the Almighty One in 
whose power he lies. There were no books 
and parchment in the first days, so God took 
the sky for His parchment, and dipping His 
fingers in the most lovely of colors, wrote out 
His covenant with man. He spread it out be- 
tween earth and heaven so that man might look 
up and see it without obstruction, and so that 
He Himself might look down on it and re- 
member His agreement. 'The bow,' He said, 
'shall be in the cloud; and I will look upon 
it, that I may remember the everlasting 
covenant.' " 

"When you draw up a covenant with a neigh- 
bor, you look well at it and then give it to your 
attorney, who puts it away in the darkness 
of the safe. But it is taken out at intervals 
for fresh examination. And the rainbow- 
covenant was put away behind the clouds, to be 
brought out again from time to time to bring 
comfort and strength to man by its appear- 
ance. The rainbow is only half seen by man. 
The lower half of its circle is lost in the 
earth. It exists, but unseen. And the full 
circle of God's beautiful covenant with man 
has never appeared to our eyes. A full half 
is lost in the unapprehending darkness of 



92 . "Now the Day Is Over" 

man's mind. The full purpose of God is not 
realized. His plans are too vast and glorious 
for the intellect or imagination to span; but 
half the rainbow is seen and it is enough. See- 
ing half we can take the rest on trust. In the 
covenant we are assured that we shall never be 
given darkness without light, winter without 
summer, seedtime without harvest, death with- 
out birth, sorrow without joy, or a thick cloud 
without a rainbow. He binds Himself not to 
give evil without good, or to bring tears with- 
out laughter. "I do set My bow in the cloud; 
and it shall come to pass when I bring a cloud 
over the earth, that the bow shall be seen in the 
cloud." 

"A rainbow is made up of rain and sunshine 
and life is woven of the same stuff — tears and 
laughter. The most glorious sunshine is in- 
capable of a rainbow without the co-operation 
of the dark traihng clouds ; and it is impossible 
for the human character to reach its ripest 
maturity and beauty on joy alone. Sorrow is 
as beneficent and necessary as joy. There are 
untutored natives who dread the rainbow. 
They believe that it is a serpent that rises out 
of the pools to devour men; and there are 
unbelieving men in cultured lands who dread 
adversity no less. They do not believe that 
God 'brings the cloud.' The rainbow is their 



"Now the Day Is Over" 93 

refutation and It is written across the sky for 
all to see. On the other hand, there are un- 
believing men who see only the cloud and are 
blind to the sunshine. To them life Is one long 
tragedy. It Is an Immense futility. They re- 
gard man as a mere cork In the sea, thrown 
about by blind, deaf, unintelligible natural 
forces void of purpose; active Indeed but un- 
governed. Human life to them Is a black 
cloud driven through immensity by the winds 
of unintelligent fate. It has no meaning and 
Its darkness Is the deeper because they cannot 
call a halt and disperse it into nothingness. 
Like Job's wife they would say 'Curse God and 
die,' yet they cannot die. But Job, as he sits 
on the dunghill, looks up at the rainbow and 
finds a truer philosophy. 'What?' says he, 
'shall we receive good at the hand of God, and 
shall we not receive evil?' Under the rain- 
bow's arch there are fruitful fields and beautiful 
gardens for where the rainbow hangs In air 
there is sunshine and there is rain — the parents 
of fruitfulness. And to whom God gives in 
equal measure joy and sorrow there Is beauty 
and fruitfulness of heart and life. His promise 
to 'every living creature' is that He will never 
send the cloud without the sunshine and, what 
is not less gracious. He will never send the 
sunshine without the cloud. When by day the 



94 "Now the Day Is Over" 

Israelites tramped the fiery desert He led them 
by a pillar of cloud, and they marched in its 
shade; and in the blackness of night He threw 
in the sky a pillar of sunshine; and they 
walked through the gloom in its light. 

"In these terrible days of war when our 
hearts begin to fail us and dark doubts cloud 
the mind, let us look at the Covenant God 
has made with us. He has set it in rainbow 
colors across the sky, that 'he who runs may 
read' and 'the wayfaring man though a fool 
may not err.' God has flung his rainbow over 
the trench and the grave; over the Garden of 
Gethsemane; over the Cross on Calvary. It 
is over the tomb in the Arimathean's Garden; 
and over Olivet, as Christ ascends to heaven. 
We are born under the rainbow, live under it, 
die under it. At the last we shall find it over 
the throne of Judgment. Water and blood 
flowed from Christ's side; and life and death, 
joy and pain, light and darkness, summer and 
winter, peace and war come forth from God. 

"Let us take life as it comes with obedient 
wills and grateful hearts. The bee finds honey 
in the thistle as well as in the rose, and 'where 
the bee sucks there suck I,' for He who guides 
the bee guides me. Only in loving obedience 
to God shall we find true wisdom. It Is not 
so much what we are given as how we take 



"Now the Day Is Over" 95 

it that matters. To be humble nothing may 
be so sweet as sorrow; and to the proud nothing 
may be so bitter as pleasure. Let us leave 
God to mix the ingredients of our life, for 
'all things work together for good to them 
that love God.' It is all in the covenant 
written by God's fingers In the colors of the 
rainbow, and whenever He brings it from be- 
yond the clouds, let us look at it with reverent 
eyes, and ponder its promise. Then shall we 
be able to say, with Wordsworth, 

'My heart leaps up when I behold 
A rainbow in the sky.' " 

After I had finished speaking we sang, at 
the request of one of the sergeants, the hymn 
commencing 

"The Day Thou gavest Lord is ended, 
The darkness falls at Thy behest." 

And beautiful indeed was the singing of it. 

The Benediction followed. Just as I was 
ending it an impulse came to me, and I yielded 
to its Importunity. "Before we part and before 
we leave Achicourt which has meant so much 
to us of joy and sorrow," I said, "let us sing 
a kiddies' hymn. We still shelter In our hearts 
a little child. Though we have grown mous- 
taches and some of us gray hairs, the child 



96 "Now the Day Is Over" 

that we once were, never quite dies. Let us 
have a hymn for the boy within us who never 
grows up and never dies." Then I read out 
verse by verse, for it was not in their books: 

"Now the day is over, 
Night is drawing nigh, 
Shadows of the evening 
Steal across the sky. 

"Jesus, give the weary 
Calm and sweet repose; 
With Thy tenderest blessing 
May their eyelids close. 

"Grant to little children 
Visions bright of Thee; 
Guarding the sailors tossing 
On the angry sea. 

"Comfort every sufferer 
Watching late in pain; 
Those who plan some evil 
From their sin restrain. 

"When the morning wakens, 
Then may I arise 
Pure and fresh, and sinless 
In Thy holy eyes." 

I have witnessed many moving sights in my 
time and heard much deep and thriUing music; 
but I have never been so deeply moved by 
anything as by the rich, deep voices of these 
gallant men and boys who, after winning the 



. "Now the Day Is Over" 97 

Battle of Arras, had come into this ruined 
church and were singing this beautiful kiddies' 
hymn as their last farewell. 

The collection the boys had taken up had 
been so heavy that we carried it to the French 
lady's house for her. As we entered her home 
she said in her simple way, as her eyes grew 
radiant with gratitude, "I like the English 
soldiers." It was the voice of France. And 
she was worthy to speak for France. For 
two-and-a-half years her house had stood 
within a mile of the German trenches, and but 
a few hundred yards from our own firing line. 
Yet she and her mother had never left it. She 
introduced me to her mother, who had lived 
in London, and spoke English. Then she 
brought in coffee. I had noticed a most re- 
markable thing about the house. There was 
not a piece of glass broken, nor a mark of 
war on the walls. It was the only house I 
have seen, either in Achicourt or Arras, upon 
which the war has not laid its monstrous and 
bloody finger. "How is it," I asked the 
mother, "that your house has not been 
touched?" Her eyes shone and a sweet smile 
lit up her face. "It is the will of God," she 
said simply. "Shells have fallen a little short 
of us and a little beyond us. They have passed 
within a yard of the house, and we have heard 



98 "Now the Day Is Over" 

the rushing of the wind as they passed, but 
they have not touched us. When the village 
has been bombarded we have gone down into 
the cellar as was but discretion and duty, but 
we have had the conviction all along that we 
should be spared, and we refused to leave the 
house. We do not know God's purpose but 
we believe that it is God's will to spare us." 
I leave the fact to speak for itself and offer 
no explanation. Skeptics will say the house 
was spared by accident; but they would not 
have stayed there two-and-a-half years trusting 
to such an accident. These two women, with- 
out a man in the house, stayed on the very 
confines of hell v/ith its hourly suspense and 
danger for nearly three years, because they be- 
lieved it was God's will and that, though they 
walked through the fiery furnace heated seven 
times hotter than It was wont to be heated, 
He would not allow so much as a hair of their 
heads to be singed. And not a hair was singed. 
They were women in whom faith burned like 
a bright pillar of fire. One caught its light, 
and felt its heat. I have met patriots and 
heroes and know their quality when I see them 
and come near them. These were *'the real 
thing." Faith in God and faith in their coun- 
try were interwoven in their spirits like sun 
and shower in a rainbow. They were of the 



"Now the Day Is Over" 99 

same breed as the Maid of France, and hke 
her, with their white banner bearing the de- 
vice of the Cross, they withstood and defied 
the might and terror of the invader. They 
beHeved it was God's will they should stay, 
to "Be still and know that I am God." Their 
experience was expressed by the Psalmist 
centuries ago: "God is our refuge and 
strength, a very present help in trouble. There- 
fore will not we fear, though the earth be 
removed, and though the mountains be carried 
into the midst of the sea. Though the waters 
thereof roar and be troubled, though the moun- 
tains shake with the swellings thereof . . . 
Come behold the works of the Lord, what 
desolations He hath made in the earth. He 
maketh wars to cease unto the end of the earth ; 
He breaketh the bow, and cutteth the spear in 
sunder; He burneth the chariot in the fire. . . . 
The Lord of Hosts is with us; the God of 
Jacob is our refuge." 

Such was the faith of these two women, and 
their courage few men have approached. It 
is a practical matter, and after comparing it 
with the skeptic's theory of accident and coin- 
cidence and remembering his probable haste in 
seeking a place not so liable to untoward acci- 
dents, I accept the explanation of the women. 
Their house was spared and not a hair of 



"Now the Day Is Over" 

their heads injured because "it was God's will." 
If it is not the correct theory, it ought to be. 
Otherwise falsehood is more sustaining than 
truth, and inspires nobler conduct. 

The day was now over. A new chapter of 
life had been written, and in the morning, we 
left behind us this village of precious memories, 
and marched out again into the unknown. 



VIII 
SONS OF THE MOTHERLAND 

IT is said that the eel is born in the deepest 
part of the ocean, thousands of miles 
from any country, and that, urged by an 
overpowering instinct it begins almost at once 
to rise towards the light and to head for the 
land. After slowly swimming thousands of 
miles it reaches our rivers, and pushes its way 
up to their sources, and even crawls through 
the grass out of one stream into another. Here, 
if uncaught by man, it lives for years gorging 
an appetite which only developed on reaching 
the fresh water. Then, the overmastering in- 
stinct that brought it out, takes it back. It 
returns through the illimitable waters until it 
finds the place where it was born. There the 
female lays her eggs and there male and female 
die. The eggs hatch, and the young do as 
their parents did before them. 

I do not think I could kill or eat an eel. 

I have too much reverence for it now that 

I have learned its story. When in the fish 

market I see an eel struggling, I feel that 

101 



102 Sons of the Motherland 

I want to take it and drop it into the sea 
that it may go to its long home "far from 
the madding crowd's ignoble strife." How 
passionate and wild must be its desire to 
get back to its own ocean depths where it 
may perpetuate its kind and die in peace. 
Its appetite is voracious, but then, what but 
the mightiest and most elemental instincts and 
appetites could carry it through achievements 
so sublime and tragic. Picture it on its lone 
way through the deep, urged on by it knows 
not what. Scientists say that man has evolved 
from a tiny form of life that passed through 
the fish stage. If so, it explains a lot and I, 
for one, shall not be ashamed to acknowledge 
relationship to a fish with a life story as sub- 
lime as that of the eel. I know that Genesis 
speaks truly when it says that God made us 
out of the dust of the earth and breathed into 
our souls the breath of His own being thus 
animating dust with divinity. And if from the 
other inspired book, the book of Nature, scien- 
tists can teach how God mixed the clay when 
He fashioned man I will accept the teaching 
with gratitude, for it will help me to under- 
stand things that are dark in me and in my 
fellows. It will throw light on the wild 
longings, and Instincts Immature, that baffle the 
mind, and come into the clear shallow streams 



Sons of the Motherland 103 

of life like eels out of the dark unfathomable 
depths of the ocean. 

Since I went to France I have been amazed 
at the homing instinct as revealed in the com- 
ing together of the sons of the British Mother- 
land. People at home do not quite realize 
what has happened. Britain's sons have come 
back to her — have come back to die that their 
race may be saved and perpetuated. The 
British are a roving race. A large number of 
them yield to an overpowering desire to go 
out into the world. The South Pole and the 
North Pole have known the tread of their feet. 
Their ships have anchored in every creek of 
every sea. There is no town or country how- 
ever remote where their voices have not been 
heard. Even Mecca could not keep the Briton 
out. He must look upon its Black Stone. All 
lands call him to come, and see, and conquer. 
He colonizes and absorbs but cannot be ab- 
sorbed. He is a Briton still. A friend of 
mine told me that when visiting Austraha 
strangers who had never seen England, except 
in and through their fathers, would come to 
him in railway carriage or 'bus, and ask "How 
is everything at Home?" And Dr. Fitchett, 
AustraUa's splendid author, confesses that when 
he first saw the land of his fathers he knelt 
down and kissed its shore. 



104 Sons of the Motherland 

Loving the homeland with a passion stronger 
than death the Briton leaves it, for he hears 
the call of the world borne on the winds and 
waves from afar, and cannot refuse it. In 
foreign lands he lives and labors. He roams 
their fields and swims in their streams, but al- 
ways with an ear listening for the voice of the 
Motherland; for he Is hers, and at her service 
if she calls. 

The Declaration of War on Aug. 4, 19 14, 
was the Mother's call to her children. Swifter 
than lightning it passed through the waves and 
on the wings of the wind. The settler left his 
lonely cabin, the gold-digger his shovel, the 
prospector his surveying instruments, the 
rancher his herds, the missionary his church, 
the teacher his school, the clerk his office, and 
all made for the nearest port. Within a month 
there was not a ship on the wide seas but was 
bearing loyal sons back to their Motherland's 
defense. I have met, in France, British 
soldiers from every country under heaven. I 
bent over a dying soldier near Arras who was 
a clerk in Riga, Russia, when the call came. 
And one night on the Somme a fine young 
fellow from Africa entered my tent, and slept 
by my side. He was one of the most charming 
and handsome men I have ever met, and had 
come from Durban. He had fought with 



Sons of the Motherland 105 

Botha In Southwest Africa, and at the conclu- 
sion of that campaign had shipped for home. 
Next day I took him to Delville Wood for he 
wanted to see the place where his brother had 
died. I found that he was of my own com- 
munion and we talked about some of my col- 
lege friends who had gone out to Natal. Two 
days later, he died of wounds in a dressing 
station. Most of the transport officers in our 
Division have come home from abroad, and 
have been given their posts because they are 
accustomed to horses. One was prospecting in 
Nigeria, another salmon-canning in Siberia, a 
third on a plantation in South America. 

In addition to Canadians, South Africans, 
Australians, and New Zealanders, who have 
come by the hundred thousand at the call of 
the Motherland, there are hundreds of thou- 
sands who have come singly, or in small parties, 
from remote corners of the earth. For five 
weeks I was a patient in a Canadian hospital 
in France. The entire staff was Canadian. 
Some were Canadian born; others had gone out 
to that country years ago. All were of British 
blood. The colonel was a magnificent speci- 
men of manhood from London, Ontario, in 
which city he had been born. He would sit 
on the bed and tell us tales of the great snow- 
land. Sometimes he would scold us for being 



106 Sons of the Motherland 

so blind to the greatness of the Empire and tell 
us what Canada thought of the Motherland. 
One of the night orderlies would, on occasion, 
recite to us some poem such as "Jim Bludso," 
before the lights went out. Then he would 
come to my locker and take "Palgrave's 
Treasury of Songs and Lyrics" with which to 
regale his soul during the long watches of the 
night. He was of the full stature of men and 
straight as a pine. He had gone out from 
Ireland as a boy, and settled on a cattle ranch 
in the United States. One day there was 
trouble and one of the other cowboys sent a 
bullet clean through his chest. The moment 
war was declared he left his roving herds of 
cattle, crossed the frontier into Canada and 
traveled hundreds of miles to Winnipeg to 
enlist. The doctor looked at him. "What is 
this scar on your chest?" he asked. "Oh," re- 
plied the cowboy, "I fell off a wagon and 
knocked the skin off." The doctor turned him 
round and put his finger in the scar on his 
back where the bullet had passed out "And 
what is this scar at the back? Did you fall 
off another wagon?" And the two men under- 
stood one another and laughed. The doctor 
could not find it in his heart to send the cow- 
boy back to his ranch, so he was passed into 
the Canadian contingent. 



Sons of the Motherland 107 

One of the nurses we called "the Little 
Mother." She had gone to Canada five years 
before, but the war had brought her back, and 
well was it for us that it had. Among the 
patients was a doctor in the American A. M. C. 
His ancestors had left England generations ago 
and settled in New England, but he had come 
back at the call of war — a grandson of the 
Motherland. Then there was a lieutenant of 
British stock who had been born and brought 
up at Antwerp, but as the German guns were 
destroying his native city he took ship to enlist 
in the British army. "Anzac" was, as his nick- 
name denotes, an Australian. He was in the 
Flying Corps. He had heard the call at school 
and had come "home" to the land of his fathers. 

In one regiment I found a bunch of lads who 
had been born in China. But, out there In 
Hong Kong, they heard the call of a Mother- 
land they had never seen, and came post haste 
to her help. Sitting near me as I write, is an 
officer back from the Argentine, and already, on 
his arm, is a gold wound-stripe. Another in the 
mess had been pearl-fishing in Australia, but 
stored his boats to come and fight. Another 
at our table was born in Australia. He was 
with Captain Falcon Scott on his last expedi- 
tion, and saw him go out to the South Pole 
and death. He has already been wounded. 



108 Sons of the Motherland 

When the war broke out its tumult seemed to 
wake our fathers and we felt them stir in our 
blood; for ancestors are not put into graves 
but are buried alive in their sons. We felt the 
call to defend our race as our fathers did in 
their day. It was a master instinct, and the 
millions of men who voluntarily left home and 
business to fight show how deeply nationality 
is rooted in human nature. Returning from a 
far land to die — if needs be — that their kind 
may live, the scattered sons of our Motherland 
have come by all the seas to defend her, in her 
hour of need. 

"They came as the winds come 

When forests are rended; 

They came as the waves come 

When navies are stranded." 



IX 

THE TERROR BY NIGHT 

JUNE was a flaming month on the high 
ground we had captured beyond Arras. 
The Quartermaster and Transport Of- 
ficer with whom I was messing were both "on 
leave" so, as I was the only officer left in the 
camp, a Baptist padre, whose regiment was 
near, came to live with me. I had a little brown 
tent five feet wide and six feet long which a 
rifleman had lent to me because the bell-tent 
I was expecting had not arrived. The rifle- 
man did not need his tent, for he and his 
chums had built themselves a little dug-out. 
Next day the bell-tent arrived, and the other 
padre took possession of it, while I held on to 
the little brown shelter. Next to it was the 
kitchen where the servants slept and cooked. 
It was a truly wonderful contrivance of wood, 
corrugated iron and ground-sheets. The Bap- 
tist chaplain's tent was round, my shelter ob- 
long, but what shape the kitchen was, would 
pass the wit of man to say. It was a shape 

109 



110 The Terror By Night 

never seen on earth before. It had no ancestor 
and it could have no descendant. Such a de- 
sign could not occur twice. Beyond the kitchen 
were the horse-lines of the regiment and close 
by them the regimental stores. It was so hot 
that we all wore our lightest clothing; and 
when the servants got lemons from Arras, the 
lemonade they made lasted about five minutes 
only, for what was left by us was quickly drunk 
up by the servants with the assistance of those 
who like to frequent such happy places as mess 
kitchens. 

All our meals were served out of doors, 
under the blue sky. We had guests most days, 
for officers coming out from the homeland 
stayed with us for a night or a day before 
going up with the rations to join the regiment 
in the trench. Other officers had come down 
to stay with us on their way to a course at some 
military school; and one, at least, came to wait 
for the day on which he was to take his "leave." 
We were, therefore, a very merry party. It 
was almost like camping on the Yorkshire 
moors, for v/e had an uninterrupted view of 
many miles. To those who love vast stretches 
of wild barren country as I do, the scene under 
the flaming June sun was exceedingly impres- 
sive. There were no houses, streams, hedges, 
or trees, but the whole area was scored with 



The Terror By Night 111 

trenches cut into the white chalk, and showing 
clearly at great distances. The ground, with 
but short spaces between, was covered with en- 
campments. These consisted of the stores and 
horse-lines of the regiments and batteries in 
the line. The circle of the horizon was bounded 
by the charred ruins of French villages — Beau- 
rains, Neuville, Vitasse, Wancourt, Monchy 
and Tilloy. We could see the flashing of our 
own guns, and the black bursts of shells from 
those of the enemy. 

All day the sky was thick with aeroplanes, 
and many were too high to be seen except 
through strong field glasses. We watched a 
German aeroplane circling over Arras and 
directing the fire of the long guns. Soon the 
streets were strewn with dead and wounded, 
for the town was full of troops. The firing 
only lasted a few minutes, however. One of 
our aeroplanes quickly challenged the enemy to 
single combat; and we soon saw the German 
machine falling from an immense height, wing 
over wing and head over tail, utterly out of 
control. 

Dinner, In the cool of the evening, was a 
most pleasant meal. As we drank our coffee 
we watched the aeroplanes returning from the 
line like birds to their nests. Sometimes we 
counted as many as twenty, all heading foCi 



112 The Terror By Night 

home at the same time. The sun set in red 
and golden splendor, and we wondered what 
darkness would bring. On the night before 
our arrival, the regiment which made way for 
us had one of its storemen killed by a shelU 
and on most nights a few shells fell in some 
part or other of the vast camp. One evening 
shells fell a little beyond us and the transport- 
sergeant moved his horse-lines. After that, 
he moved them every evening at dark, so that 
the ground where the enemy had observed the 
horses in the day-time was left vacant when 
he opened fire at night. It was a game of 
chess with horses and men for pawns, and life 
and death for the stakes. 

On the evening before, our guest — a young 
lieutenant — was to go on leave, he got very 
uneasy. As gulls scent the approach of stormy 
weather and come inland, or blackbirds and 
larks feel the approach of winter and migrate 
to summer lands, so men can sometimes scent 
danger and coming death. He had with him a 
bottle of whisky, and he kept it on the table 
outside my tent — a safe place for it. 

**I don't mind telling you Padre," he said, 
as he poured out a glass, "I've got the 'wind- 
up' badly to-night. I don't like the feel of 
things. I would rather be in the trenches than 
here, because I know what is likely to happen 



The Terror By Night 113 

there, but here in the open I feel strange and 
unprotected. I shall be glad when it is 
morning." 

His feeling was quite natural. We always 
feel another man's dangers more than our own 
because they are new to us and we don't know 
what to expect or how to meet them. A man 
will choose a big danger that he is used to, 
sooner than a lesser danger that is new to 
him. Besides, the lieutenant had his "leave- 
warrant" in his breast pocket and that will sap 
any man's courage. He has a feeling that the 
shells are after his "leave-warrant" and that 
the gunners know where it is. He suspects that 
fate is malignant and takes a special delight 
in killing a man when he is on the way to 
"Blighty." Many a man has been killed with 
a "leave-warrant" in his pocket, or "commis- 
sion papers" in it which were taking him home. 

Our doctor told me how one night he and 
the chaplain who preceded me were riding on 
the front of an ambulance car when a shell 
burst and with a fragment killed the chaplain. 
In the padre's pocket was his warrant, and he 
was taking his last ride before going home; 
but instead of going home in "Blighty" he went 
to his long home, and the warrant lies in the 
grave with him. A man feels particularly 
vulnerable when the long-looked-for "leave- 



114 The Terror By Night 

warrant" is in his pocket. He does not fear 
death after "leave," but he does on the eve of 
*'leave." He wants one more look at his home 
and loved ones before going on the long and 
lone journey which, despite all the comfort 
which the Christian religion gives, still retains 
much of its terror to the human spirit. There 
have been few better Christians than Samuel 
Johnson and John Bunyan, but neither of them 
could contemplate fording the river of death 
without misgivings. When they came to it they 
found it much less formidable than they had 
expected. Had they been at the Front with 
"leave-warrants" in their pockets to "Fleet 
Street, London," or "Elstow, Bedford," I 
fancy neither of them would have taken undue 
risks. 

I could sympathize with the young lieutenant 
for, a few months before, a "leave-warrant" 
had made a bit of a coward of myself. I was 
in two minds whether or not to go up to the 
firing line to see the men again before shipping 
for home. The "leave-warrant" was in my 
pocket, and I was to go next morning; but the 
doctor's story of my predecessor came to my 
mind, and the "leave-warrant" spread itself out 
before the eyes of my imagination. I saw the 
faces of my wife, and mother, and dog, and 
the faces of my friends. The old home and 



The Terror By Night 115 

the green fields stretched out before me; and 
I decided to see them first and the "boys" after. 
I had just been with my men, but it was a long 
time since I had been with those at home. If 
there was a shell with my name and address 
on it, I thought I would make the Hun wait 
till I had been home, before I let him deliver 
it into my hands. I think a "leave-warrant" 
would make a coward of any man. At any 
rate, the feeling is quite understood and recog- 
nized by everyone at the Front ; and this young 
ofEcer had been sent down from the trenches 
to us, three days before his train was due to 
start, so that he might have a better chance of 
using his "warrant," and at the same time, feel 
more at ease in mind. 

I undressed and got into bed, and lay read- 
ing by the light of a candle when the lieutenant 
came to the tent door again. "It's no use, 
Padre," he said, "I can't go to bed yet. I feel 
too uneasy. I wish I were on the train." He 
went back to the bell-tent he was sharing with 
the other chaplain, and I put out my light. 

There was the silence of a summer evening 
broken, only by the distant bursting of shells. 
Then, suddenly, there was a crash about seventy 
yards from our tents, and two more near the 
horse-lines. "To run or not run?" that was 
the question; and my answer was in the nega- 



116 The Terror By Night 

tive. If I ran, it was just as likely that I 
should run into a shell, as out of the way of 
one. On Easter Sunday I had seen three of 
our non-commissioned officers killed in that 
way. Besides, I like my bed, once I have taken 
the trouble to get into it. I therefore put on 
my steel helmet which I had placed by the 
bed-side, and waited to see what would happen. 
(A steel helmet is a wonderfuL comfort when 
men are under fire. We may not have much 
in our heads but we feel more anxious about 
them than about all the rest of the body. The 
helmets are heavy and uncomfortable and we 
don't like wearing them, but, nevertheless, may 
blessings ever rest on the head of the man 
who invented them. I have seen scores of lives 
saved by them, and they have given infinite 
comfort and assurance in trying moments.) 

A long silence elapsed, then the lieutenant 
appeared at the door of the tent again. 

'*You haven't been here all the time, have 
you?" he asked. "We went down to the old 
trenches at the bottom of the camp; but it is 
rather cold and wearisome there, and I think 
the worst is over now. I'm just going to take 
another sip of the 'Scotch wine' and then turn 
in for the night; but I'm not going to un- 
dress." 

Ten minutes later there was a tremendous 



The Terror By Night 117 

crash as if a star had fallen on top of us. 
There came a blinding flash of light, a strong 
smell of powder, and a spluttering of bullets 
on the ground. That was enough to get the 
laziest man living out of bed, and to answer 
the question, "to run or not to run?" in the 
affirmative. I slipped on my boots without 
fastening them, put on my trench coat and bade 
my little tent a fond farewell. There were 
some old German gun-pits close by, and I 
sought refuge there. "Come in here, sir," cried 
a voice, and I found myself by the side of a 
sergeant. Then the cook ran in bare-foot and 
laughing. No one seemed to have been hit, and 
all had now sought shelter. We waited for 
some time and nothing further happened. The 
night was cold and I began to shiver in my 
pajamas. So I started to look about for a 
place to sleep in, for a feeling of estrangement 
had grown up between me and the little brown 
tent. There was a path across a shallow bit 
of trench, and underneath it I found the barber, 
lying comfortably on his bed. He invited me 
in, and said that I could have the bed, and 
he would sleep at the side of it on his ground- 
sheet. He could, he said, sleep as soundly on 
the ground as on the bed of stretched sacking. 
I therefore returned to my tent to get blankets. 
The time-fuse of a shell had gone through the 



118 Tlie Terror By Night 

kitchen and rebounded from a beam on to my 
servant, but without doing him any injury and 
he proposed sleeping there for the night. He 
only agreed to move to some safer place, when 
I ordered him to do so. There was no one 
in the bell-tent so I knew the occupants were 
quite safe somewhere. On striking a light to 
get my blankets, I noticed three small holes 
in the top of the tent, and knew that shrapnel 
bullets had missed me only by inches. It had 
been a close shave and it was not inappropriate 
that I was now going to be the guest of a 
barber. 

The psychological effect was not one I should 
have expected. The incident caused no shell- 
shock, and but little immediate excitement; so 
I was soon asleep. All the others were In a 
like case. The excitement came with the morn- 
ing when we examined the tents and the 
ground. In the bell-tent there were ten shrap- 
nel bullet holes. One had gone through the 
piece of wood on which the officers' clothing 
had been hung, and must have passed immedi- 
ately over the body of the Baptist chaplain as 
he lay in bed. Others must have passed equally 
near the lieutenant who was not in bed, but, 
standing up at the time, fully dressed. In my 
own little tent I found eleven holes and they 
were In all parts of the canvas. Some of the 



The Terror By Night 119 

bullets must have gone in at one side and out 
at the other, for only five were found em- 
bedded in the hard, chalky ground. A sixth 
had passed through the box at the bed-head 
and entered deeply into the book I had been 
reading. Outside the kitchen, the servants 
picked up a lump of shell a foot long and 
three or four inches wide. Well was it for 
them that the fragment fell outside the kitchen 
and not inside. The ground around the tents 
was sprinkled with shrapnel bullets and bits of 
shell. The shells which fell near the horses 
had burst on touching the ground, and not like 
ours, in the air. They had dug deep holes In 
the earth, and as the horses were within a few 
yards of them, it seemed miraculous that none 
was hurt. The transport had just returned 
from taking up the rations, and, as one of the 
drivers leapt off his horse, a bullet hit the 
saddle where his leg had been a second before. 
Not a man or horse received a scratch, although 
the shells had made a direct hit on our camp. 
On other occasions one shell has laid out scores 
of men and horses. 

They say that sailors don't like padres on 
board ship, because they think the latter bring 
them bad luck. And most people are a little 
afraid of the figure thirteen, but though it was 
the thirteenth of June and there were two 



no The Terror By Night 

padres in the tents, we had the best of what 
is called "luck." So I think we may say it was 
one up for the padres. After breakfast we 
'gathered together some of the fragments lying 
around the tents, and found the nose-cap of a 
shell which had burst seventy yards away. 
With these, and the time-fuse which hit my 
servant, the other chaplain and I went to a 
battery and asked the officers to tell us some- 
thing about the gun, just as one might take a 
bone of some extinct creature to a scientist, 
and ask him to draw an outline of the whole 
animal. They told us that the gun was a long- 
range, high-velocity, naval gun with a possible 
range of fifteen miles. They knew where it 
was, but could not hit it. The shot was a 
large high-explosive, shrapnel shell, and the 
time-fuse indicated that it had come to us from 
about eleven miles away. 

On our return we built ourselves dug-outs 
for the nights, and only lived in the tents by 
day. Sometimes we were shelled in the day- 
time, but by taking cover took no hurt, though 
a lad in the transport next to us was seri- 
ously wounded. When they were shelling us 
by day, we could distinctly hear the report 
of the gun, a second or two later, see the shell 
burst in the air; and a second later still, we 
could hear it. We saw the burst before we 
heard it. 



The Terror By Night 121 

I have given this personal incident not, I 
hope, out of any impulse of egotism, but be- 
cause it furnishes those who have not been at 
the Front with an idea of the terror which 
assails our men by night, both in the trenches 
and in the "back areas." There can be but 
few who, having been any length of time at 
the Front, have not had similar experiences 
and equally narrow escapes. They are so com- 
mon that men get used to them and do not 
take nearly enough care to protect themselves. 
Loss by such stray shells is expected, and the 
soldiers regard it much as a tradesman regards 
the deterioration of his stock. One gets used 
to the frequent occurrence of death as he does 
to anything else. At home there are thousands 
of preventable deaths — deaths through street 
accidents, diseases and underfeeding. The 
number could be enormously reduced if the 
nation would rouse itself. And human nature 
is much the same at the Front. Men prefer 
ease and comfort to safety. Also, men grow 
fatalistic. They have seen men sought out by 
shells after they have taken every precaution 
to escape them; and they have seen others go 
untouched when they seemed to be inviting 
shells to destroy them. Men are conscious of 
a Power that is not themselves directing their 
lives. They feel that in life which the Greek 
tragedians called Fate. They do not know 



122 The Terror By Night 

quite what to call it. Most of them would call 
it Providence if they spoke frankly and gave 
it a name at all. One of the finest Christian 
officers I know told me that he believed that 
God's finger had already written what his fate 
should be. If he had to die nothing could save 
him, and if he had to live, nothing could kill 
him. All he was concerned with was to be able 
to do his duty, and take whatever God sent 
him. This, he said, was the only suitable work- 
ing philosophy for a man at the Front. 

There is a widespread fatalism at the Front, 
but it is the fatalism of Christ rather than of 
old Omar Khayyam: "Take no thought for 
your life . . . for your heavenly Father know- 
eth that ye have need of all these things, but 
seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his 
righteouness. Take therefore no thought for 
the morrow ; for the morrow shall take thought 
for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day 
is the evil thereof." And this works. It 
enables men to "put a cheerful courage on" 
and do their duty. There is none of the 
paralysis of will and cessation of effort which 
follows the fatalistic philosophy of the East. 
AH that Omar Khayyam's fatalism leaves a 
man to strive after is "Red, Red Wine," in 
which he drowns memory, honor and reputa- 
tion and character. When he has passed from 



The Terror By Night 123 

among his peers, there is nothing left to re- 
member him by but a "turned-down empty 
glass." The Christian fatalism at the Front 
destroys no man's initiative, but keeps him 
merry and bright, and helps him to "do his 
bit." When he shall pass from the banquet- 
ing-house of life, into the Great Unexplored, 
he will leave as his memorial, not a turned- 
down glass, but a world redeemed from tyranny 
and wrong. 




"ETON BOYS NEVER DUCK" 

N army is more courageous than the in- 
dividuals who compose it. The coward 
finds sufficient courage for his job 
while doing it with his regiment, and the brave 
is at his bravest. He has a courage which is 
not his own but which, somehow, he puts on 
with his uniform. He does deeds of daring 
he could not have done as a civilian. The 
army has a corporate courage and each soldier 
receives a portion of it just as he receives a 
ration of the army's food. It is added to what 
he has of his own. 

The badge of the army is courage. When 
a recruit joins the army he knows that he is 
putting away the civilian standard of courage 
with his derby hat, and is putting on the 
soldier's standard of courage with his uniform. 
His great fear is that he will not be able to 
live up to it. He wonders if he is made of 
the stuff that produces heroes. He is a mystery 
to himself and has a haunting fear that there 



"Eton Boys Never Duck.' " US 

may be a strain of the coward in his make-up. 
He wishes it were possible to have a rehearsal 
for he would rather die than fail on the ap- 
pointed day. 

The chaplain fears that he will faint and 
become a hindrance instead of a help when he 
first sees blood and torn limbs in the dressing 
station; and the recruit is afraid of being afraid 
in the hour of battle and of bringing dishonor 
and weakness upon his regiment. He will be 
glad when the trial is over — when he knows 
the stuff of which nature has made him. A 
friend of mine told me one day that he was 
walking over a heavily shelled field with a 
young aristocrat of a highly strung tempera- 
ment. The man was afraid, but would not 
yield to his fear. His lips twitched and his 
face became drawn and white. His movements 
were jerky but he made no other sign. He 
talked about paltry things in which, at the 
moment, he had not the slightest interest, and 
passed jocular or sardonic remarks about the 
things that were happening around them. My 
friend ducked his head when a shell burst near 
as we all have done often enough, but the 
young aristocrat kept his head as high and stiff 
as if he were being crowned. He held it up 
defiantly; was it not filled with the bluest 
blood of England? The shells might blow it 



126 " Eton Boys Never Duck ! " 

off If they liked. That was their concern, not 
his, but they should never make him bow. His 
fathers had fought on British battleiields%for 
centuries, and had never bowed their heads to 
a foe, and he would not break the great tradi- 
tion. Shells might break his neck but they 
should never bend it. He would face the 
enemy with as stiff an upper-lip and as stiff a 
neck as ever his fathers did. He knew his per- 
sonal weakness and reinforced his strength 
with that of his fathers'. He was not afraid 
of death. He was afraid of being afraid. 

My friend was a coachman's son who by 
courage and capacity of the highest order had 
won a commission. He had no traditions 
either to haunt or help him, and he had often 
been tried in the fire and knew his strength. He 
was not afraid of being afraid. It was natural 
to duck when a shell burst near and it did 
him no harm and made no difference to the 
performance of his duties; so he ducked as he 
felt inclined, and then laughed at his nerves 
for the tricks they were allowing the shells to 
play on them. But, knowing his companion's 
more sensitive nature and temperamental weak- 
ness, he was immensely impressed by his stiff 
neck and proudly erect head. He showed a 
self-control which only centuries of breeding 
could give. Here was a hero indeed. The 



" Eton Boys Never Duck ! " 127 

shells he was defying were as nothing to the 
fears which haunted his imaginative nature and 
which, with his back to the wall of his family 
traditions, he was fighting and keeping at bay. 

My friend could not refrain from compli- 
menting him on resisting the natural tendency 
to duck the head when a shell screamed above 
them. 

"Eton boys never duck," replied the young 
aristocrat. 

He was an Eton boy and would die rather 
than fall short of the Eton standard. In this 
war hundreds of them have died rather than 
save themselves by something which did not 
measure up to the Eton standard. The ranks 
of young British aristocrats have been terribly 
thinned In this war and I have heard their 
deeds spoken of with a reverence such as Is 
only given to legendary heroes. They have 
gone sauntering over the crater-fields to their 
deaths with the same self-mastery and outward 
calm which the French aristocracy manifested 
as they mounted the steps of the guillotine in 
the Reign of Terror. To their own personal 
courage was added the courage of their race, 
and the accumulation of the centuries. 

We speak of our new armies. There can be 
no "new" armies of Britons. The tradition 
of our newest army goes back to Boadicea. 



128 "Eton Boys Never Duck ! " 

Its forerunners, without shields or armor, and 
almost without weapons, dared the Romans — 
the proud conquerors of the world — to battle; 
and gave them the longest odds warriors ever 
gave. They knew they could not win but they 
knew they could die. Dead warriors they 
might become but never living slaves. They 
ran up Boadicea's proud banner because they 
knew that while the Romans might soak it in 
British blood, no power on earth could drag 
it through the mire. 

Our forefathers crossed swords with Csesar 
and his Roman legions, and our newest army 
goes into battle with the prestige born of two 
thousand years of war. They have a morale 
that belongs to the race in addition to the 
morale they possess as individuals. It is said 
that "the British do not know when they are 
beaten." How should they know? They have 
had no teachers. All they know is that if they 
have not gained the victory the battle is not 
ended and must go on until they pitch their 
tents on the undisputed field. The German 
Emperor spreads out his War Map but it 
is as undecipherable as the mountains in the 
moon to our soldiers. Tyrants have never 
found them apt scholars at geography. They 
prefer to make their own maps even though 
they have no paint to color them with except 



" Eton Boys Never Duck ! " 129 

the red blood in their veins. The Kaiser may 
roll up his War Map of Europe; our soldiers 
have no use for it, and will not commit to 
memory its new boundaries. They feel in their 
souls the capacity to make a new one more in 
line with their ideas of fair play. 

"Eton boys never duck." If the muscles of 
their necks show a tendency to relax they call 
to mind how inflexible their fathers have stood 
in bygone days, and their necks become stiff 
and taut once more. Wellington said that 
Waterloo was won on the playing fields of 
Eton. It is still true that "Eton boys never 
duck" to the foe ; nor do the soldiers they lead. 



XI 

"MISSING" 

THE word "Missing" has come to exer- 
cise an even more terrible power over 
the human heart than the word "Death." 
The latter kills the heart's joy and hope with 
a sharp clean cut, but "Missing" is a clumsy 
stroke from the executioner's axe. In a few 
cases the wounded victim is spared and allowed 
to recover, but in the majority of cases there 
is no reprieve and a second blow is struck after 
a period of suspense and suffering. A chaplain 
dreads the word. As he opens his corre- 
spondence after a battle, it fixes him as the 
glittering eye of the Ancient Mariner fastened 
the wedding guest. It leaps from the page 
at him with the malignant suddenness of a 
serpent. Wounds and death he can explain to 
relatives, but "missing" is beyond explanation. 
No one who has not been at the Front can 
conceive how a lad can disappear and no one 
see what becomes him. A man may read 
graphic accounts of conditions of life in the 



"Missing" 131 

battle-line, but it is beyond his imagination to 
visualize it with any real approach to truth. 
After the first day of the Somme Campaign 
we had hundreds of casualties and most of 
them were classed as "Missing." The soldiers 
went "over the top" and did not return, and 
no one knew why. They were simply "miss- 
ing." Why did no one know their fate? It 
came about in this way. The men scrambled 
over the parapet and, forming in line, charged 
across No Man's Land in extended order. 
Some fell immediately. The wounded among 
them got back to the dressing station, and the 
bodies of the dead were found within a few 
days, at least. So far, there are no "Missing." 
The rest of the men press on, some falling 
at every step; the line thins, and the men get 
separated. When a man falls his neighbor 
cannot stay with him. He must press on to the 
objective, otherwise, if the unwounded stayed 
to succor the wounded, there would be none 
to continue the attack; and under the hail of 
shells and bullets sweeping the open ground, 
everyone would perish. The only way to suc- 
cor the wounded is to press 'on, capture the 
enemy trench, and stop the rifle and machine- 
gun lire. Consequently, the man who presses 
on does not, as a rule, know whether his com- 
rade fell dead, was wounded, or merely took 



132 "Missing" 

cover in a shell hole. And even though he 
were to know, he may be killed himself later, 
and his knowledge die with him. 

If the attack succeeds, and the German trench 
is held by us, No Man's Land can be 
searched. The wounded and dead are found, 
and but few are reported "missing." But if 
the attack fail, and the regiment has to retire 
to its own line, it becomes impossible for us 
to search that part of No Man's Land, ad- 
joining the German trench (for there is rarely 
any truce after a battle in this war), and so, 
it is impossible to find out whether those who 
have failed to return were killed, wounded, or 
taken prisoners. The comrades who saw them 
fall are probably killed, for the return is as 
fatal as the attack. If they come back wounded 
they are taken straight to the hospitals and so 
have no chance of reporting to their officers 
the fate of those whom they saw fall. Only 
the unwounded return to the regiment and, In 
a lost battle, these are few and know but little 
of what happened to those around them. They 
were excited and were fighting for their lives. 
They had no leisure to observe the fate of 
others. 

On one occasion our men took some German 
trenches opposite them and held them for 
some hours by desperate fighting, but before 



Missing" 133 



^e? 



dusk had to retire. Many were left dead or 
wounded in the captured trenches, and many 
fell on the return journey. The few who got 
back to us unwounded could give very little 
information about individuals who were miss- 
ing. They had been separated one from an- 
other and fighting hour after hour with des- 
peration. All therefore who did not return 
to the regiment or dressing station, and whose 
bodies were not recovered, were reported as 
"Missing" unless declared dead by reliable 
eye-witnesses. The evidence of eye-witnesses 
must be carefully examined before a regiment 
dare report a soldier dead on the strength of 
It. During an attack a man is in an abnormal 
state of excitement and the observations of 
his senses are not entirely reliable. Men 
imagine they see things, and frequently make 
mistakes in identity. I have known many cases 
in which a man has sworn that he saw another 
being carried to the dressing station, yet the 
missing man's body has afterwards been found 
near the German lines. The eye-witness 
simply mistook one man for another. No end 
of pain to relatives has been caused by these 
mistakes and a regiment rightly declines on 
such evidence to report a soldier as killed. 

Some weeks after the attack just referred to, 
we received letters from some of the officers 



134 "Missing" 

and men who had been taken prisoners; in- 
formation about others came through The 
Geneva Red Cross Society. Those of whom 
we heard nothing for six months we knew to 
be, in all probability, dead. Nine months later, 
the Germans retired from the position, and 
many of our dead were found still lying out 
in No Man's Land. Some were identified. 
Others could not be, their discs having per- 
ished by reason of the long exposure. Many 
of the dead had been left in the German 
trenches. These had been buried by the enemy 
and he had left no crosses to mark the graves. 
After more than a year there is no direct 
evidence of the death of many who fought 
on that day. They are "Missing," and we can 
only conclude that they were killed. 

In other cases, men are reported missing for 
several weeks, and then reported dead. A 
typical case may be cited to show how it comes 
about. We attacked one morning at dawn. 
The enemy were on the run, and in a state of 
exhaustion. An immediate attack would, it 
was believed, carry the position without much 
loss of life, even though our big guns had not 
had time to come up in support. Unfortunately 
the Germans were, unknown to us, reinforced 
during the night. Their new troops met our 
men with a hail of rifle and machine-gun fire, 



"Missing" 135 

and the regiment was ordered to retire. 
Several failed to return. We knew that some 
of the men had been forced to surrender, 
especially the wounded. Others had been 
killed. Those who returned unwounded were 
not able, however, to give us the names of 
those who had been killed or of those who had 
been taken prisoners. The attack had been 
made in the half-light of dawn so that our men 
could not be seen distinctly. They had also 
advanced In extended order so as to avoid 
making themselves an easy target. The half- 
light and the distance of one man frona another 
made it difficult, therefore, for anyone to see 
either who fell or why they fell. Most of 
those who were killed or taken prisoners were 
therefore reported as "missing." 

A few days later the whole Division was 
moved to another part of the Front. A fresh 
regiment took our place, and, a few weeks 
later, with adequate artillery support, carried 
the German trenches. After the battle, burial 
parties were sent out by the regiment to bury 
both its own dead and ours who had been left 
In the German half of No Man's Land. 
Each grave was marked with the soldier's 
name, and his disc and paybook were sent to 
our regiment as proof of his death. The War 
Office was then informed that such and such a 



136 "Missing" 

man "previously reported missing, is now re- 
ported killed." 

There are, however, cases of missing men 
which cannot be explained. The facts never 
come to light, and we can only guess what hap- 
pened. They may have been buried by the 
enemy, or they may have been buried in the 
dark by some regimental burial party which 
could not find their discs. They may even have 
been buried by a shell or blown to fragments 
by a direct hit. We have no evidence. 

After the attack on Gommecourt a youth I 
knew had his wound dressed at the Regimental 
Aid post and was seen, by more than one of 
his chums, passing down the communication 
trench to the Advanced Dressing Station where 
I happened to be. Yet he never arrived, slight 
though his wound was. It was impossible for 
him to have got lost. His brother and I made 
every possible enquiry about him, but nothing 
ever came to light, and we both came to the 
conclusion that on his way down the trench 
he had been buried by a shell. In another 
case an officer was wounded and four stretcher 
bearers went out to bring him in. None were 
ever seen again, and later, when we came into 
possession of the ground, the body of none 
of them were found. It was scarcely possible 
for them to have been taken prisoners, and 



*' Missing" 137 

they were never reported as having been cap- 
tured. We concluded, therefore, that a shell 
had both killed and buried them. 

One day a rifleman reported sick to the 
Doctor and was sent down the line to the 
Dressing Station whence he would be sent on 
to a Rest Camp. He was not seriously ill, 
and needed no escort. It was impossible for 
him to have wandered into the German lines, 
yet he never reported at the Dressing Station 
or anywhere else. Loss of memory is very 
rare, but even if that had happened to him, 
he could not have wandered about behind our 
lines without being found and arrested. No 
report of his burial ever reached us and we 
were led to the conclusion that he was killed 
by a shell on the way down, and in such a way 
that all means of identification were lost. In 
another case a private, wounded in the arm, 
was sent down the line in company with a 
party of stretcher bearers who were carrying 
a "lying case." Evidently he got separated 
from them in the dark, and was hit by a shell, 
for he never reached any dressing station, and 
his fate was never known. 

Conditions at the front are such that these 
mysterious disappearances must inevitably oc- 
cur. Every possible arrangement which cir- 
cumstances will allow is made to prevent them ; 



138 "Missing" 

but they cannot be altogether eliminated. 
People at home may sometimes think that more 
might have been done, but it is because they 
have no conception of the amazing conditions 
under which the war is carried on. Every 
officer and private knows that he may disap- 
pear without leaving a trace. That being so, 
they, if only from common prudence and the 
instinct of self-preservation, combine to reduce 
the danger to its lowest limits; but, when all 
has been done, war is war; and nothing can 
rob it of its horrors. 

Every day, officers and men die in trying to 
save their comrades, and nothing could be more 
unjust than to blame those who survive for 
not having done more to prevent others from 
being lost; for those who are surviving, to-day, 
may become missing to-morrow, and leave no 
trace behind. Officers have sometimes shown 
me letters from poor distracted relatives which 
could never have been written if they could 
have imagined the deadly peril in which the 
officers stood and the manifold distractions 
that wore them down. Sometimes an officer's 
letter is short and business-like in reply to an 
enquiry, but it must be remembered that his 
first duty is to the living. He must hold the 
line and save his men; and he has, despite the 



"Missing" 139 

tragedy of his position, to answer not one en- 
quiry but scores. And before he has finished 
answering all the enquiries, his own parents, 
perhaps, will be making enquiries about his 
own fate. Our officers are the bravest and 
kindest-hearted men that ever had the lives of 
others in their keeping; and when the chaplain 
asks them for details about any missing or slain 
soldier, they will go to endless trouble for him. 
They know what their own death will mean 
to their parents ; and the knowledge makes their 
hearts go out in sympathy to the parents of 
their men, and it makes them do all that is 
possible to prevent lives being lost. 

When Moses died no man knew the place 
of his burial. It has not been found to this 
day. We know nothing of his last thoughts 
or of the manner of his death. His end is a 
perfect mystery. But we know that he died in 
the presence of God; that God strengthened 
him in the dread hour; and that with His own 
fingers He closed the lids over the prophet's 
brave, tender eyes. God buried Moses in a 
grave dug by His own hands and He will know 
where to find the poor worn-out body of the 
great patriot at the resurrection of the just. 
And God was with every one of our missing 
lads to the last, and He knows the narrow bed 



140 "Missing" 

in which each lies sleeping. The grave may 
have no cross above it, but it will often know 
the tread of an angel's feet as he comes to 
plant popples, primroses and daffodils above 
the resting-place of the brave. 



XII 
"IT MUST BE SUNDAY" 

THE Psalmist of Israel tells us that God 
has "ordained" the moon and the stars. 
These "flaming fires" are "ministers of 
His that do His pleasure." Nor are they 
the only ones chosen from Nature. Mungo 
Park, having laid down in the desert to die, 
notices beside him a tiny flower, and it awakens 
hope in him. The winter of his despair is 
ended. He rises again, and pushes on until 
he finds a human habitation where he is cared 
for by native women as though he were their 
brother. The little flower had been "or- 
dained" to minister hope to a lost and despair- 
ing traveler. 

At the Front such ministering by Nature is 
of common occurrence. No Man's Land is 
desolate enough to look upon, but there is life 
there, and music. Larks have chosen it for 
their nests, and amid its desolation they rear 
their young. Even the pheasants have taken 
141 



142 "It Must Be Sunday" 

to some parts of it. If we could but know 
the thoughts of the wounded who have lain 
out there waiting for death, we should find 
that the moon and the stars, the birds and the 
field mice, had not allowed them die without 
some comforting of the spirit. 

One Sunday our regiment was resting in re- 
serve trenches after a period in the firing line. 
It was a beautiful evening, and as the sun 
sank westward I administered the Sacrament 
of the Lord's Supper. The day was far spent 
but, as the bread was broken, there came to 
us a vision of the Face which the two disciples 
sav/ on another such evening in the far-off 
village of Emmaus. On the way back to my 
billet I met a platoon of Royal Engineers re- 
turning from the baths. One of them had 
been a member of my church in London, and 
he dropped out to talk with me. Those who 
have not been in the Expeditionary Force can 
hardly understand the pleasure a man feels 
when he meets someone he knew In the days of 
peace, or even someone who knows the street 
or town out of which he came. He was full 
of talk, and as I listened his excitement and 
pleasure bubbled over like a spring. 

"Last night," he said, "was the night of 
my life. I never expected to see daylight 
again. Talk about a 'tight corner,' there was 



"It Must Be Sunday" 143 

never one to match It, and as you know, my 
chums and I have been in many. The Huns 
simply plastered us with shells. The bom- 
bardment was terrific. It was like being in a 
hailstorm and we expected every moment to be 
our last. 

. "You know the trench which the infantry 
took yesterday? Well, we were there. We 
went up at dark to fix barbed wire in front of 
it ready for the counter-attack. We were out 
in No Man's Land for about two hours, work- 
ing as swiftly and silently as we could. When- 
ever the enemy sent his lights up, we laid down, 
and so far we had escaped notice and were 
congratulating ourselves that the work was 
nearly done, and that our skins were still 
whole. Then, somehow, the Germans spotted 
us, and let fly. It was like hell let loose. We 
ran to the trench for shelter, but it seemed as 
if nothing could save us from such a deluge 
of shells. It was just like being naked in a 
driving snow-storm. We felt as if there was 
no trench at all, and as if the gunners could 
see us in the dark. After that experience I 
can pity a hare with a pack of hounds after 
it. But we just sat tight with such cover as 
we had and made the best of it. There was 
nothing else to do. If we were to be killed, 
we should be killed. Nothing that we could 



144 "It Must Be Sunday" 

do would have made any difference. Yet, 
though there didn't seem shelter for even a 
mouse, only one of us was hit, and that was 
the sergeant. He was rather badly 'done in,' 
and we could only save his life by getting him 
quickly to the dressing station. 

"I am one of the taller and stronger men 
of my platoon so, of course, I volunteered as 
a stretcher-bearer. There was no communica- 
tion trench, so we had no choice but to lift 
him up and make a dash across the open. 
They were shelling us like blazes, but we dare 
not delay because, if we were overtaken by 
daylight, it would be impossible to get him 
away till the next night, and by that time he 
would be dead. So we decided to try our luck. 
We had just lifted him up when a shell burst 
right on top of us, and knocked us all down. 
For a minute or two I was unconscious, and 
when I came round I thought I must surely 
be wounded, so I ran my fingers over my body 
but found neither blood nor a rent in my 
clothes. I was covered with chalk but that 
didn't matter. Except for a touch of concus- 
sion in the brain I was none the worse, and 
soon pulled myself together. The sergeant 
was a sight! He was half-buried, and we 
could scarce see him for chalk; but we dug 
him out and got him on the stretcher again. 



"It Must Be Sunday" 145 

After that we sat down in the bottom of the 
trench till the effect of the shock had worn 
off a bit, for we all felt like rats that had been 
shaken by a terrier. 

"Then, as suddenly as it had started, the 
shelling stopped. The calm that followed was 
wonderful. I never felt anything so restful be- 
fore. It was like the delicious restfulness that, 
sometimes, immediately follows hours of fever. 
Then, as if to make it perfect, a lark rose out 
of No Man's Land and began to sing. The 
effect on us was magical. It was the sweetest 
music I have ever heard, and I shall remember 
it to my dying day. The countryside was dark 
and silent, and, as I listened to the lark, old 
days came back to mind. You remember that 
Saturday midnight in the June before the war 
when you took us into Epping Forest to sec 
the dawn break over it? Well, as I listened 
to the lark, I was back there in the forest. 
Then some impulse seized me and, hardly 
knowing what I did, I cried aloud, 'Why bless 
me, it must be Sunday,' and so it was, although 
I had forgotten. 

"Then we jumped up for we saw that the 
dawn was breaking and, lifting the sergeant 
out of the trench, we rushed across the opea 
ground in the direction of the dressing station. 
Talk about 'feeling protected!' Why, I felt 



146 "It Must Be Sunday" 

that God was all around us — that no harm 
could touch us. A great calm stole over me, 
and I felt utterly devoid of fear. We had, 
as you know, to bring the sergeant some two 
miles to the dressing station, just down the 
road there, but we got him safely in, and I 
think he will get better." 

While we were talking, a shell burst near 
the trench where my men had been taking of 
the Sacrament, and another burst by the road- 
side close to the Engineers. With a laugh 
and a hearty "Good-night" he shook hands, 
saluted, and ran on to rejoin his comrades. 
The shells were part of the game. In London 
we had been in the same football team. He 
had kept goal and I had played full back, and 
he regarded the shells that had fallen as bad 
shots at goal made by the opposing team. 
They might have been serious but, as it hap- 
pened, the. ball had each time gone out of 
play. 

I waited a minute or two in the hope of 
getting a lift. A motor car came along; I 
stopped it and got in; for at the Front every- 
thing is Government property and more or 
less at one's service. I found myself sitting 
by the side of a private, who had been wounded 
in the face and right hand by the shell that 
had just fallen near the platoon of Engineers. 



"It Must Be Sunday" 147 

He had left his horse with a comrade, and 
was being driven to the Advanced Dressing 
Station by a driver who, happening to pass at 
the moment, had kindly offered him a lift. 
After a little wait at the Dressing Station I 
got on the front of an ambulance car. There 
were only two cases inside, and they were being 
taken to the Main Dressing Station in Arras. 
One of them had his feet and arms tied to 
the stretcher, for he was suffering from shell- 
shock; and three orderlies were in charge of 
him. The poor fellow laughed and cried al- 
ternately and struggled to break loose. "I'm 
a British soldier," he cried, "and I will not 
be tied up. I've done my bit, and this is the 
way you pay me out. I'll not have it." And 
time and again he struggled desperately to 
break away. 

The orderlies in charge of him were wise and 
tactful as women. They asked him questions 
about the fight, and he fought his battle over 
again. They praised his regiment and told him 
it had done magnificently, and he laughed and 
chuckled like a young mother, dangling her 
first baby on her knee. And so, without mis- 
hap, we reached the ruined town of Arras 
where nightly the shells fall among the for- 
saken houses in which our soldiers are billeted. 
The wounded private was carried into the hos- 



148 "It Must Be Sunday" 

pital, and I walked away to my room in an 
adjoining street. 

So ended the day which, in the hour of 
dawn, the dark had told the young engineer 
*'must be Sunday." 



XIII 
OUR TOMMIES NEVER FAIL US 

ON Easter Monday, in the Battle of 
Arras, I saw two sights such as I shall 
never forget. One revealed the kind 
and forgiving spirit of our men, the other their 
unflinching courage. After burying three non- 
commissioned officers who had been killed the 
day before, I reached the Advanced Dressing 
Station near which our regiment was "standing 
to" in a support trench. Other regiments of 
our Division were carrying out the attack and, 
with small loss, had taken the enemy lines. 
The German trenches had been blotted out by 
our shells but their deep dug-outs, with 
machine-guns at their mouths, remained un- 
touched, and it was almost impossible for our 
soldiers to discover them until they got within 
a few yards of the entrances. 

The German commander's idea was to keep 
his men in the shelter of the dug-outs until 
our barrage lifted. They were then to rush 
out with machine-guns and rifles to destroy our 

149 



150 Our Tommies Never Fail Us 

men who were following it up. If the idea 
had been carried out, the German line would 
have been impregnable for our men would 
have been mown down like corn before the 
reaper. It failed because German human 
nature could not rise to the occasion. The 
German soldiers had been demoralized by the 
safety of the dug-outs and by the thunder of 
our shells above them. They cowered in the 
dug-outs when they should have rushed out. 
The critical moment passed, and with its pass- 
ing, our soldiers leapt to the entrances and 
threw down hand grenades. There was a wild 
cry of pain and fear from below. Arms went 
up and the cry of "Kamerad." The sur- 
render was accepted and the beaten soldiers 
crawled out. From some dug-outs as many as 
two hundred prisoners were taken. In other 
parts of the line there was a stiff light, but, on 
the whole, our casualties were very light. 
From my own observation I should say that 
we took more prisoners than we suffered casual- 
ties. Some companies could boast a prisoner 
for each man engaged In the attack. ! 

The Advanced Dressing Station was at the 
corner of Cross Roads and the sight around 
it was wonderful to behold. A crowd of 
prisoners was assembling ready to be marched 
to the cages, and wounded officers and men, 



Our Tommies Never Fail Us 151 

British and German, were being bandaged. 
The prisoners were hungry. For some days 
our artillery had cut off their rations. A 
platoon of our soldiers came marching by, and, 
to save time, eating their breakfasts as they 
passed along. The prisoners looked at them 
with hungry eyes. Our men saw the look and 
stopped. Breaking rank for a moment they 
passed in and out among the prisoners and 
shared out their rations. "Here, Fritzy, old 
boy, take this," I heard all around me, and 
Fritz did not need asking twice. He took the 
biscuits and cheese gratefully and eagerly. 
The look of trouble passed out of his eyes and 
he felt that he had found friends where he 
had only expected to find enemies. He began 
to hope for kindness In his captivity. The 
scene was one of pure goodwill. 

Scarcely ever have I seen a crowd so happy. 
Our Tommies laughed and cracked jokes which 
no German could understand, but I heard not 
a single taunt or bitter word. In fact, Fritz 
was treated more like a pet than a prisoner. 
One who had worked In London, and who 
spoke English, asked me for a cup of tea for 
a comrade who was slightly wounded, and I 
got one in the dressing station. The platoon 
of Tommies re-formed and marched away to 
the battle and the prisoners were led off to 



152 Our Tommies Never Fail Us 

the cages. There were still large numbers of 
prisoners on the road, and they were moving 
about without guards. Many of them were 
being used as stretcher-bearers and they seemed 
to do their work out of goodwill and not of 
constraint. 

Their assistance was of great help to the 
wounded. The battle was going well with us. 
Everyone felt in good heart and kindly dis- 
posed. An officer who lay seriously wounded 
and waiting for a car told me of the splendid 
work which his regiment had done. His eyes 
shone with suppressed excitement and pride as 
he told the story. While he was speaking two 
soldiers came limping down the road and their 
appearance was greeted with a burst of 
laughter. One was English, the other German. 
Tommy had his arm round the German's neck 
and was leaning on him while Fritz, with his 
arm round the lad's waist, helped him along. 
They came along very slowly for both were 
wounded, but they laughed and talked together 
like long-lost brothers. Yet neither could un- 
derstand a word the other said. 

I passed down the road towards the line. 
Gunners of the Territorials were hurriedly 
hitching their guns to the horses ready to ad- 
vance to new positions. In the ruined village 
a party of engineers was already unloading a 



Our Tommies Never Fail Us 153' 

wagon of rails with which to build a light rail- 
way. I continued along the road towards the 
next village. It had just fallen into our hands 
and not one stone was left on another. There 
were scores of wounded men hobbling back 
from it and I gave my arm to such as needed 
it most. A badly wounded Tommy was being 
brought along on a wheeler by two orderlies 
and as I helped them through the traffic we 
heard the heavy rumble of the advancing field- 
guns. 

The road was cleared with the quickness of 
lightning. Out of the village the batteries burst 
at a mad gallop and down the road they came 
at break-neck speed. With the swiftness of 
a fire engine in a city street the rocking guns 
swept past. The gunners clung to the am- 
munition limbers with both hands and the 
drivers whipped and spurred the excited foam- 
flecked horses as though they were fiery beings 
leaping through the air and Incapable of fatigue 
or weakness. Suddenly the drivers raised their 
whips as a sign to those behind, and the 
trembling horses and bounding guns came to a 
dead halt. The leading gun had overturned at 
a nasty place where the road dipped down into 
the hollow. The rest of the batteries stood 
exposed on the crest of the ridge. Before re- 
tiring the Germans had felled all the trees that 



154 Our Tommies Never Fail Us 

grew by the roadside so that nothing might 
obstruct their line of vision. Such a catas- 
trophe as this was what the enemy had been 
hoping for. The sun shone brilliantly, and 
our batteries were a direct target for the Ger- 
man gunners such as seldom occurs. Our boys 
were caught like rats in a trap. By the side 
of the road ran a shallow trench and near us 
two broad steps into it. We laid the wounded 
lad in the bottom of the trench and sat down 
by his side. Shells were falling all around and 
fountains of dirt and debris rose into the air 
and, on five or six occasions, covered us with 
their spray. 

I covered the lad's face. He was barely con- 
scious and uttered no word. It seemed as if 
nothing could live in such a bombardment. A 
shell burst near, and the cry of dying horses 
rent the air. The traces were cut and the 
horses and gun-carriage drawn off the road. 
Every second I expected to see the horses and 
drivers in front of me blown into the air and 
I watched them with fascinated eyes. Not a 
man stirred. They sat on their horses and gun- 
carriages as though they were figures in bronze. 
Not a man sought the trench and not a man 
relieved the tension by going forward to see 
what was wrong or to lend a hand. Each 
.knew his place, and if death sought him it 



Our Tommies Never Fail Us 155 

would know where to find him. The horses 
felt that they had brave men on their backs 
and, in that mysterious way peculiar to horses, 
caught the spirit of their riders. Every shell 
covered men and horses with chalk and soil, 
but they remained an immobile as statuary. It 
was magnificent and it was war. A driver in 
the battery beside us got wounded in the leg 
and hand. He jumped off his horse and came 
to us to be bandaged. Then he leapt back into 
the saddle. It seemed an age, but I suppose 
it was only a few minutes, before the obstruc- 
tion was removed. The whips flashed in the 
air and the horses sprang forward. The guns 
rocked and swayed as they swept past us and 
within a few minutes they were in their new 
positions under the hill upon which lay the 
ruins of Neuville Vitasse. 

The shelling ceased as suddenly as it had 
started and we lifted out our wounded soldier 
and went in the direction of the dressing sta- 
tion. Some distance up the road my attention 
was called to one of the drivers whom the 
artillery had left in the care of some privates. 
He was living, but his skull was broken, and 
he would never wake again to consciousness. 
He was fast "going West." His day was over 
and his work was done. I got him lifted on 
to a stretcher and taken to the dressing station 



156 Our Tommies Never Fail Us 

so that he might die in peace and be buried 
in the little soldiers' cemetery behind it. 

When I returned in the evening to our billet 
I told the transport officer of the magnificent 
bravery of the artillery drivers. 

"Any other drivers would behave just as 
well, if caught in the same trap," he replied. 

He spoke the simple truth. They would. 
Such supreme courage and devotion to duty are 
common to the army. Their presence among 
all ranks and in all sections of the army makes 
the fact the more wonderful. Both officers and 
men love life, but they love duty more, and 
commanders in drawing up their plans know 
that they can rely on their soldiers to carry 
them out. Our Tommies never fail us whether 
in France, Mesopotamia, or Palestine. Devo- 
tion to duty is inwoven with the fibers of their 
hearts. They are men who, either in kindness 
to captives or courage amid disaster and de- 
structioHj never fail us, 




XIV 

THE CROSS AT NEUVE CHAPELLE 

I HE war on the Western Front has been 
fought in a Roman Catholic country 
where crucifixes are erected at all the 
chief cross-roads to remind us that, in every 
moment of doubt as to the way of life, and 
on whichever road we finally decide to walk, 
whether rough or smooth, we shall need the 
Saviour and His redeeming love. We have 
seen a cross so often when on the march, or 
when passing down some trench, that it has 
become inextricably mixed up with the war. 
When we think of the great struggle the vision 
of the cross rises before us, and when we see 
the cross, we think of processions of wounded 
men who have been broken to save the world. 
Whenever we have laid a martyred soldier to 
rest, we have placed over him, as the comment 
on his death, a simple white cross bearing his 
name. We never paint any tribute on it. 
None is needed, for nothing else could speak so 
eloquently as a cross — a white cross. White 
157 



158 The Cross at Neuve Chapelle 

is the sacred color in the army of to-day, and 
the cross is the sacred form. In after years 
there will never be any doubt as to where the 
line of liberty ran that held back the flood and 
force of German tyranny. From the English 
Channel to Switzerland it is marked for all 
time with the crosses on the graves of the 
British and French soldiers. Whatever may 
be our views- about the erection of crucifixes 
by the wayside and at the cross-roads, no one 
can deny that they have had an immense in- 
fluence for good on our men during the war 
in France. 

The experience of many a gallant soldier is 
expressed in the following Belgian poem: 

"I came to a halt at the bend of the road; 
I reached for my ration, and loosened ray load; 
I came to a halt at the bend of the road. 

"O weary the way, Lord; forsaken of Thee, 
My spirit is faint — lone, comfortless me; 

weary the way, Lord; forsaken of Thee. 

"And the Lord answered, Son, be thy heart lifted up,, 

1 drank, as thou drinkest, of agony's cup; 

And the Lord answered. Son, be thy heart lifted up. 

"For thee that I loved, I went down to the grave, 
Pay thou the like forfeit thy Country to save; 
For thee that I loved, I went down to the grave. 

"Then I cried, 'I am Thine, Lord; yea, unto this last.' 
And I strapped on my knapsack, and onward I passed. 
Then I cried, 'I am Thine, Lord; yea, unto this last.' 



The Cross at Neuve Chapelle 159 

"Fulfilled is the sacrifice. Lord, is it well? 
Be it said — for the dear sake of country he fell. 
Fulfilled is the sacrifice. Lord, is it well?" 

The Cross has interpreted life to the soldier 
and has provided him with the only acceptable 
philosophy of the war. It has taught boys 
just entering upon life's experience that, out- 
topping all history and standing out against 
the background of all human life, is a Cross 
on which died the Son of God. It has made 
the hill of Calvary stand out above all other 
hills in history. Hannibal, Caesar, Napoleon 
' — these may stand at the foot of the hill, as 
did the Roman soldiers, but they are made to 
look mean and insignificant as the Cross rises 
above them, showing forth the figure of the Son 
of Man. Against the sky-line of human history 
the Cross stands clearly, and all else is in 
shadow. The wayside crosses at the Front and 
the flashes of roaring guns may not have taught 
our soldiers much history, but they have taught 
them the central fact of history; and all else 
will have to accommodate itself to that, or 
be disbeheved. The Cross of Christ is the 
center of the picture for evermore, and the 
grouping of all other figures must be round it. 

To the soldiers it can never again be made a 
detail in some other picture. Seen also in the 
light of their personal experience it has taught 



160 The Cross at Neuve Chapelle 

them that as a cross lies at the basis of the 
world's life and shows bare at every crisis of 
national and international life so, at the root 
of all individual life, is a cross. They have 
been taught to look for it at every parting of 
the ways. Suffering to redeem others and make 
others happy will now be seen as the true 
aim of life and not the grasping of personal 
pleasure or profit. They have stood where 
high explosive shells thresh out the corn from 
the chaff — the true from the false. They have 
seen facts in a light that lays things stark 
and bare; and the cant talked by skeptical 
armchair-philosophers will move them as little 
as the chittering of sparrows on the housetops. 
For three long years our front-line trenches 
have run through what was once a village 
called Neuve Chapelle. There is nothing left 
of it now. But there is something there which 
is tremendously impressive. It is a crucifix. 
It stands out above everything, for the land 
is quite flat around it. The cross is immedi- 
ately behind our firing trench, and within two 
or three hundred yards of the German front 
trench. The figure of Christ is looking across 
the waste of No Man's Land. Under His right 
arm and under His left, are British soldiers 
holding the line. Two dud shells lie at the 
the foot. One is even touching the wood, 



The Cross at Neuve Chapelle 161 

but though hundreds of shells must have swept 
by it, and millions of machine-gun bullets, it 
remains undamaged. Trenches form a laby- 
rinth all round it. When our men awake and 
"stand-to" at dawn the first sight they see is 
the cross; and when at night they lie down in 
the side of the trench, or turn into their dug- 
outs, their last sight is the cross. It stands 
clear in the noon-day sun; and in the moonlight 
it takes on a solemn grandeur. 

I first saw it on a November afternoon when 
the sun was sinking under heavy banks of 
cloud, and it bent my mind back to the scene 
as it must have been on the first Good Friday, 
when the sun died with its dying Lord, and 
darkness crept up the hill of Calvary and cov- 
ered Him with its funeral pall to hide His 
dying agonies from the curious eyes of unbe- 
lieving men. I had had tea in a dug-out, and 
it was dark when I left. Machine-guns were 
sweeping No Man's Land to brush back ene- 
mies that might be creeping towards us through 
the long grass; and the air was filled with a 
million clear, cracking sounds. Star-shells rose 
and fell and their brilliant lights lit up the 
silent form on the cross. 

For three years, night and day, Christ has 
been standing there in the midst of our sol- 
diers, with arms outstretched in blessing. They 



162 The Cross at Neuve Chapelle 

have looked up at Him through the clear star- 
light of a frosty night; and they have seen 
His pale face by the silver rays of the moon 
as she has sailed her course through the 
heavens. In the gloom of a stormy night they 
have seen the dark outline, and caught a pass- 
ing glimpse of Christ's effigy by the flare 
of the star-shells. What must have been the 
thoughts of the sentries in the listening posts 
as all night long they have gazed at the cross ; 
or of the officers as they have passed down 
the trench to see that all was well; or of some 
private sleeping in the trench and, being 
awakened by the cold, taking a few steps to 
restore blood-circulation? Deep thoughts, I 
imagine, much too deep for words of theirs 
or mine. 

And when the Battle of Neuve Chapelle was 
raging and the wounded, whose blood was 
turning red the grass, looked up at Him, what 
thoughts must have been theirs then? Did 
they not feel that He was their big Brother 
and remember that blood had flowed from 
Him as from them; that pain had racked Him 
as it racked them; and that He thought of 
His mother and of Nazareth as they thought 
of their mother and the little cottage they were 
never to see again? When their throats be- 
came parched and their lips swollen with thirst 



The Cross at Neuve Chapelle 163 

did they not remember how He, too, had cried 
for a drink; and, most of all, did they not 
call to mind the fact that He might have saved 
Himself, as they might, if He had cared more 
for His own happiness than for the world's? 
As their spirits passed out through the wounds 
in their bodies would they not ask Him to re- 
member them as their now homeless souls 
knocked at the gate of His Kingdom? He had 
stood by them all through the long and bloody 
battle while hurricanes of shells swept over 
and around Him. I do not wonder that the 
men at the Front flock to the Lord's Supper 
to commemorate His death. They will not go 
without it. If the Sacrament be not provided, 
they ask for it. At home there was never such 
a demand for it as exists at the Front. There 
Is a mystic sympathy between the trench and the 
Cross, between the soldier and his Saviour. 

And yet, to those who willed the war and 
drank to the day of its coming, even the Cross 
has no sacredness. It is to them but a tool 
of war. An officer told me that during the 
German retreat from the Somme they noticed 
a peculiar accuracy in the enemy's firing. The 
shells followed an easily distinguishable course. 
So many casualties occurred from this accurate 
shelling that the officers set themselves to dis- 
cover the cause. They found that the circle 



164 The Cross at Neuve Chapelle 

of shells had for its center the cross-roads, and 
that at the cross-roads was a crucifix that stood 
up clearly as a land-mark. Evidently the 
crosses were being used to guide the gunners, 
and was causing the death of our men. But 
a more remarkable thing came to light. The 
cross stood close to the road, and when the 
Germans retired they had sprung a mine at the 
cross-roads to delay our advance. Everything 
near had been blown to bits by the explosion 
except the crucifix which had not a mark upon it. 
And yet it could not have escaped, except by 
a miracle. They therefore set themselves to 
examine the seeming miracle and came across 
one of the most astounding cases of fiendish 
cunning. They found that the Germans had 
made a concrete socket for the crucifix so that 
they could take it out or put it in at pleasure. 
Before blowing up the cross-roads they had 
taken the cross out of its socket and removed 
it to a safe distance, then, when the mine had 
exploded, they put the cross back so that it 
might be a landmark to direct their shooting. 
And now they were using Christ's instrument 
of redemption as an instrument for men's de- 
struction. 

But our young officers resolved to restore 
the cross to its work of saving men. They 



The Cross at Neuve Chapelle 165 

waited till night fell, and then removed the cross 
to a point a hundred or two yards to the left. 
When in the morning the German gunners 
fired their shells their observers found that the 
shells fell too far wide of the cross and they 
could make nothing of the mystery. It looked 
as if someone had been tampering with their 
guns in the night. To put matters right they 
altered the position of their guns so that once 
more the shells made a circle round the cross. 
'And henceforth our soldiers were safe, for the 
shells fell harmlessly into the outlying fields. 
Nor was this the only time during their retreat 
that the Germans put the cross to this base use 
and were foiled in their knavery. 

When a nation scraps the Cross of Christ 
and turns it into a tool to gain an advantage 
over its opponents, it becomes superfluous to 
ask who began the war, and folly to close our 
eyes to the horrors and depravities which are 
being reached in the waging of it. 

There is a new judgment of the nations now 
proceeding and who shall predict what shall 
be? The Cross of Christ is the arbiter, and 
our attitude towards it decides our fate. I 
have seen the attitude of our soldiers towards 
the cross at Neuve Chapelle and towards 
that for which it stands; and I find more com- 



166 The Cross at Neuve Chapelle 

fort in their reverence for Christ and Chris- 
tianity than in all their guns and impediments 
of war. 

The Cross of Christ towers above the wrecks 
of time, and the nations will survive that stand 
beneath its protecting arms in the trenches of 
righteousness, liberty and truth. 



XV 
iTHE CHILDREN OF OUR DEAD 

THERE are times when we get away from 
the Front for a rest. We hear no 
more the sound of the guns, but give 
ourselves up to the silence and charm of the 
country. Before going into the Somme fight- 
ing we were billeted for ten days in the neigh- 
boring village to Cressy; and as the anniversary 
of the battle came that week the colonel chose 
the day for a march to the battlefield. The 
owner of the field, when the old windmill 
stood, from which King Edward III directed 
his army, came to meet us and describe the 
battle. When the war is over he is going to 
erect a monument on the spot to the memory 
of the French and British troops who In com- 
radeship have died fighting against the common 
foe. 

They were happy days that we spent around 
Cressy. The last that some were destined to 
know this side of the Great Divide. The bed- 
room next to mine was occupied by two fine 

167 



168 The Children of Our Dead 

young officers of utterly different type. One 
was a Greek whose father had taken out 
naturalization papers and loved the country of 
his adoption with a worshiping passion that 
would shame many native born. The other 
was a charming, argumentative, systematic, 
theological student of Scots parentage. The 
night before we left, the Greek accidentally 
broke his mirror and was much upset. It was, 
he said, a token that Death was about to claim 
him. The Scot laughed heartily, for he had 
not a trace of the superstitious in him ; or, if he 
had — which was more than likely — it was kept 
under by his strong reasoning faculties. 

"If you are to be killed," he replied, "I am 
to be killed too, for I also have broken my 
mirror." 

He spoke the words in jest, or with hardly 
a discernible undercurrent of seriousness; but 
they were true words nevertheless. The two 
bed-mates were killed in the same battle a week 
or two later. I had tea with them in their 
dug-out on the eve of the fight. They were 
to take up their positions in an hour, but the 
student could not resist having just one more 
argument. He directed the conversation to the 
New Theology, and to German philosophers 
and Biblical scholars. He simply talked me 
off my feet, for he possessed the most brilliant 



The Children of Our Dead 169 

intellect in the regiment, combined with self- 
reliance and perfect modesty. Then the con- 
versation turned to the question of taking a tot 
of rum before going over the parapet. He 
was a rigid teetotaler, "for," said he, "drink 
is the ruin of my country." He was opposed 
to the idea of taking rum to help one's courage 
or allay his fears. He would not, he said, go 
under with his eyes bandaged. He would 
take a good look at Death and dare him to 
do his worst. He was superb, and Death never 
felled a manlier man. Browning would have 
loved him as his own soul for he had Brown- 
ing's attitude to life exactly, and could have 
sung with him, 



"Fear death? . . . 
I was ever a fighter, so — one fight more, 

The best and the last! 
I would hate that death bandaged my eyes, and forbore, 

And bade me creep past. 
No! let me taste the whole of it, fare like my peers 

The heroes of old, 
Bear the brunt, in a minute pay glad life's arrears 

Of pain, darkness and cold. 
For sudden the worst turns best to the brave, 

The black minute's at end, 
And the elements' rage, the fiend-voices that rave, 

Shall dwindle, shall blend. 
Shall change, shall become first a peace out of pain, 

Then a light . . . 

And with God be the rest!" 



170 The Children of Our Dead 

He was found with his "body against the 
wall where the forts of folly fall." His brave, 
intelligent face was completely blown away. 
His Greek friend was wounded, and while be- 
ing dressed in a shell-hole by his servant, was 
hit again and killed. 

Some weeks later all that remained of the 
regiment was drawn out to a little village some 
miles from Amiens, and very similar to the 
one we had occupied near Cressy. We were 
taken to it in motor-'buses for the men were 
too exhausted to march, and the days spent 
there were days of great delight. We had a 
glorious, crowded-out service on the Sunday. 
It was both a thanksgiving and a memorial 
service, and I spoke to the men on "The Pass- 
ing of the Angels." 

"When the music ceased," I said, "and the 
herald-angels departed, the sky became very 
empty, cold and gray to the Shepherds; and 
they said one to another, 'let us now go even 
unto Bethlehem.' And they went and found 
out Jesus. If the angels had stayed the shep- 
herds would have stayed with them. The 
angels had to come to point them to Jesus but, 
that done, they had to go away to make the 
shepherds desire Jesus and seek Him. 'When 
the half-gods go the gods arrive.' The angels 
had to make room for Jesus and the second 



The Children of Our Dead 171 

best had to yield place to the best. When John 
the Baptist was killed his disciples went in their 
sorrow to Jesus; and having lost our noble 
comrades, we must go to Him also. The best 
in our friends came from Jesus as the sweet 
hght of the moon comes from the sun; and we 
must go to the Source. If we find and keep 
to Jesus, sooner or later we shall find our lost 
friends again, for 'them also which sleep in 
Jesus will God bring with him !' " 

In some such words I tried to comfort those 
who had left their comrades behind in the 
graves on the Somme; for I know how deeply 
they felt the loss. During the week we had 
dinner parties, and all kinds of jolly social in- 
tercourse. It was amusing to see the delight 
everyone felt at having a bed to sleep in. 
"Look Padre, at these white sheets," an officer 
cried as I passed his window. He was as 
merry over them as if a rich maiden aunt had 
remembered him in her will. Some got "leave" 
home, and were so frankly joyful about it that 
it made the rest of us both glad and envious. 
We made up for it somewhat by getting leave 
to spend an occasional day in Amiens. There 
I went into the glorious cathedral. Almost the 
whole of the front was sandbagged, but even 
thus, it was a "thing of beauty" and has be- 
come for me a "joy forever." 



172 The Children of Our Dead 

Except Rouen Cathedral I have seen nothing 
to equal it. Notre Dame, with its invisible 
yet clinging tapestry of history, is more deeply 
moving. But it is sadder — more sombre. 
Something of the ugliness and tragedy of by- 
gone days peep out in it; but Amiens Cathedral 
is a thing of pure joy and beauty. It suggests 
fairies, while Notre Dame suggests goblins. 

While I was looking at its glorious rose- 
windows which were casting their rich colors 
on the pillars, a father and his two children 
came in. The man and son dipped their 
fingers in the shell of holy water, crossed their 
foreheads and breasts with the water, and were 
passing on; but the little girl who was too 
short to reach the shell, took hold of her 
father's arm and pulled him back. She, too, 
wished to dip her fingers in holy water, and 
make the sign of the cross over her mind and 
heart. The father yielded to her importunity 
and touched her hand with his wet fingers. 
She made the sacred sign and was satisfied. 
The father and son had remembered their own 
needs but forgotten the child's. 

After all the tragic happenings on the 
Somme why should this little incident linger in 
my memory like a primrose in a crater? Did 
it not linger because of the tragedy of the 
preceding weeks? I had been living weeks to- 



The Children of Our Dead 173 

gether without seeing a child and after the 
slaughter of youth which I had witnessed the 
sight of a child in a cathedral was inexpressibly 
beautiful. The father's neglect of its finer 
needs gave me pain. We have lost so many 
young men, that every child and youth left to 
us ought to be cared for as the apple of our 
eye. We have lost more than our young men. 
We have lost those who would have been their 
children. The little ones who might have been, 
have gone to their graves with their fathers. 
The old recruiting cry, "the young and single 
first" was necessary from a military stand- 
point but, from a merely human point of view, 
I could never see much justice in it. The young 
had no responsibility, direct or indirect, for the 
war. They were given life and yet before 
they could taste it, they were called upon to 
die in our behalf. We who are older have 
tasted of life and love ; the residue of our years 
will be much the same as those that have gone 
before; there will be little of surprise or new- 
ness of experience. Perhaps, too, we have 
living memorials of ourselves, so that if we die, 
our personality and name will still live on. 
Our death will only be partial. While William 
Pitt lived could it be said that Lord Chatham 
had died? His body was dead, truly, but his 
spirit found utterance in the British House of 



174 The Children of Our Dead 

Commons every time his son spoke, and 
Napoleon felt the strength of his arm as truly 
did Montcalm on the Heights of Abraham. I 
should not have mourned the loss of the young 
Scot and the Greek so much, had they left to 
the world some image and likeness • of them- 
selves. In dying, they gave more than them- 
selves to death; 

"Those who would have been 
Their sons they gave — their immortality." 

After a summer on the Somme, I have come 
to understand something of how fear of the 
devouring maw of Time became almost an ob- 
session with Shakespeare. Death had taken 
from him some of the dearest intimates of his 
heart, and taken them young. And so, like the 
sound of a funeral-bell echoing down the lane 
where lovers walk, there is heard through all 
his sonnets and poems of love the approaching 
footsteps of death. Sometimes the footsteps 
sound faintly, but they are seldom absent. 
How then would he have felt in a war like 
this, in which the "young and single" have gone 
out by the hundred thousand to prematurely 
die? 

Others, however, who have given their lives 
were married men, and they have left images 
of themselves in trust to the nation. We know 



The Children of Our Dead 175 

the last thoughts of a dying father. Captain 
Falcon Scott as he lay dying at the South Pole 
has expressed them for all time. "Take care 
of the boy," he said, "there should be good 
stuff in him." He found comfort in the re- 
flection that he would, though he died, live on 
in his son; but he was saddened by the thought 
that the son would have to face the battle of 
life without a father to back him up. The 
boy would therefore need special "care." 

On the evening of the first battle of the 
Somme I spoke to a young officer as he lay in 
a bed at the Field Ambulance. He had lost 
his right arm and he told me how it had hap- 
pened. He was charging across No Man's 
Land when a shell cut it off near the shoulder, 
and flung it several yards away. As he saw 
it fall to the ground the sight so overcame him 
that he cried aloud in distress, "Oh my arm! 
My beautiful arm." He was still mourning 
its loss, so, to comfort him, I told him that 
Nelson lost his right arm and won the Battle 
of Trafalgar after he had lost it. Like Nel- 
son, I told him, he would learn to write with 
his left hand and still do a man's job. He 
would not be useless in life as he feared. 
When the children of our dead soldiers charge 
across No Man's Land in the battle of life 
they will think of their lost fathers, and the 



176 The Children of Our Dead 

agonizing cry of the young wounded soldier 
will rise to their lips, "Oh my arm, my beauti- 
ful arm." The State is providing artificial 
arms for our wounded soldiers. Will it be a 
right arm to the children of its dead? Will 
it be a father to the fatherless and a husband 
to the widow? Unless it is ready for this 
sacred task, it had no right to ask for and 
accept the lives of these men. 

The State, with the help of the Church, must 
resolve that no child shall suffer because its 
father was a hero and patriot. The State must 
help the child to the shell of holy water without 
the little one having to pull at its arm to re- 
mind it of its duties. If the children of our 
dead soldiers lack education, food, moral and 
spiritual guidance, or a proper start in life, 
no words will be condemnatory enough to 
adequately describe the nation's crime and in- 
gratitude. They are the sons and daughters 
of heroes and there "should be good stuff" in 
them. It is the nation's privilege, as well as 
its duty, to take the place of their fathers. 

A few days later I walked into Arras from 
the neighboring village. There were guns all 
along the road, and there was not a house but 
bore the mark of shells. Some of the civilians 
had remained, but these were mostly old people 
who could not settle elsewhere, and who pre- 



The Children of Our Dead 177 

ferred to die at home rather than live in a 
strange place. One house impressed me 
greatly. It had been badly damaged but its 
garden was untouched and in it were half a 
dozen rose-trees. It was the beginning of 
spring, and each tree was covered over with 
sacking to preserve it from the cold and frag- 
ments of shells. The owner did not care suffi- 
ciently for his own life to move away, but he 
cared for the life of his roses. And so, when 
the summer came there were roses in at least 
one garden in Arras. 

The noise of the guns was terrific and the 
old man had to live in the cellar, but he found 
leisure of soul to cultivate his roses. His action 
was one of the most beautiful things I have 
seen in the entire war. The children of our 
homes are more beautiful than Arras roses, 
and more difficult to rear. May we trust our 
country not to neglect them? Will she save 
them from the mark of the shell, and help 
them to grow up to a full and perfect loveliness? 
Our dying soldiers have trusted her to do it. 
From their graves they plead, 

"If ye break faith with us who die, 
We shall not sleep, though poppies blow 
In Flanders fields." 



XVI 
A FUNERAL UNDER FIRE 

IT was in a ruined village behind the 
trenches. A fatigue party had just come 
out of the line, and was on its way to 
rest-billets in the next village. The men were 
tired so they sat down to rest in the deserted 
street. Suddenly, a scream, as from a disem- 
bodied spirit, pierced the air. There was a 
crash, a cloud of smoke, and five men lay 
dead on the pavement, and twelve wounded. 
Next morning I was asked to bury one of the 
dead. Under a glorious July sky a Roman 
Catholic chaplain and I cycled between deso- 
late fields into the village. A rifleman guided 
us down a communication-trench till we came 
to the cemetery. It was a little field fenced 
with trees. There we found a Church of 
England chaplain. He and the Catholic chap- 
lain had two men each to bury. 

A burial party was at work on the five graves. 
It was the fatigue party of the evening before, 
and the men were preparing the last resting 
178 



A Funeral Under Fire 179 

place of those who had died at their side. 
They worked rapidly, for all the morning the 
village had been under a bombardment which 
had not as yet ceased. Before they had fin- 
ished they were startled by the familiar but 
fatal scream of a shell and threw themselves 
on the ground. It burst a short distance away 
without doing harm, and the soldiers went on 
with their work, as if nothing had happened. 
When the graves were ready, two of the bodies 
were brought out and lowered with ropes. 
The Church of England chaplain read the 
burial service over them, and we all stood round 
as mourners. Two more bodies were brought 
out and we formed a circle round them while 
the Roman Catholic chaplain read the burial 
service of his Church — chiefly, in Latin. There 
now remained but one, and he, In turn, was 
quietly lowered Into his grave. He was still 
wearing his boots and uniform and was wrapped 
around with his blanket. 

"No useless coffin enclosed his breast, 
Not in sheet or in shroud we wound him; 
But he lay like a warrior taking his rest 
With his martial cloak around him." 

All his comrades who had been with him In 
the dread hour of death were mourning by his 
grave, and standing with them were his officer 



180 A Funeral Under Fire 

and two chaplains. I read the full service as 
it is given in our Prayer Book. It was all 
that one could do for him. The Catholic chap- 
lain had sprinkled consecrated water on the 
bodies and I sprinkled consecrated soil. Was 
it not in truth holy soil? Behind me was one 
long, common grave in which lay buried a hun- 
dred and ten French soldiers; "no Braves" 
was the inscription the cross bore. In front of 
me were three rows of graves in which were 
lying British soldiers. French and British sol- 
diers were mingling their dust. In death, as in 
life, they v/ere not divided. 

I felt led to offer no prayer for the lad at 
my feet, nor for his dead comrades. He needed 
no prayer of mine; rather did I need his. He 
was safe home in port. The storm had spent 
itself and neither rock, nor fog, nor fire would 
trouble him again. His living comrades and 
I were still out in the storm, battling towards 
the land. He had no need of us, but his parents 
and comrades had need of him. We were 
there to pay a tribute to his life and death, to 
pray for his loved ones, and to learn how frail 
we are and how dependent upon Him who is 
beyond the reach of the chances and changes 
of this mortal life. 

I was half way through the recital of the 
last prayer — "We bless Thy Holy Name for 



A Funeral Under Fire 181 

all Thy servants departed this life in Thy 
faith and fear" — when that fatal, well-known 
scream, as of a vulture darting down on its 
prey, again tore the air. The men, as they 
had been taught, dropped to the ground like 
stones. My office demanded that I should con- 
tinue the prayer, and leave with God the deci- 
sion as to how it should end. There was a 
crash, and the branches of the trees overhead 
trembled as some fragments of shell smote 
them. But there was nothing more. The men 
rose as quickly as they had fallen, and all were 
reverently standing to attention before the last 
words of the prayer found utterance. The 
graves were filled in and we went our several 
ways. Next day white crosses were placed 
over the five mounds, and we bade them a long 
and last farewell. 



XVII 
A SOLDIER'S CALVARY 

THERE is one afternoon on the Somme 
that stands out in my memory like a 
dark hill when the sun has sunk below 
the verge and left a lingering bar of red across 
the sky. It was a Calvary thick with the bodies 
of our men. I was looking for the West- 
minsters and they were difficult to find. I 
passed over one trench and reached another. 
There I asked the men if they knew where the 
Westminsters were, and they expressed the 
opinion that the regiment was in the trench 
ahead. There was no communication trench 
so I followed a fatigue-party for some distance 
which was marching in single file, and carry- 
ing hand-grenades to the firing line. They 
turned to the right and I kept straight on. 
Every few yards I passed rifles reversed and 
fastened in the ground by their bayonets. They 
marked the graves of the dead. A few sol- 
diers, but newly killed, were still lying out. 
At last I reached a trench and found in it 
182 



A Soldier's Calvary 183 

a number of Westminsters. They were sig- 
nalers on special duty, and they told me that 
I had already passed the regiment on my left. 
The poor fellows were in a sad plight. The 
weather was cold and they were without 
shelter. There were German dug-outs but they 
were partly blown in and full of German dead. 
The stench that rose from these, and from the 
shallow graves around, was almost unbearable. 
Yet there amid falling shells, the lads had to 
remain day and night. Their rations were 
brought to them, but as every ounce of food 
and drop of water, in addition to the letters 
from home, had to be brought on pack mules 
through seven or eight miles of field tracks in 
which the mules struggled on up to the knees 
in sticky mud and sometimes up to the belly, 
it was impossible for the regiment to receive 
anything beyond water and "iron rations," i.e., 
hard biscuits. Water was so precious that not 
a drop could be spared to wash faces or clean 
teeth with, and I always took my own water- 
bottle and food, to avoid sharing the scanty 
supplies of the officers. After a little time 
spent with the signalers I moved up the trench 
and looked in at the little dug-out of the 
Colonel commanding. All the officers present, 
bearded almost beyond recognition, were sitting 
on the floor. The enemy had left a small red 



184 A Soldier's Calvary 

electric light, which added an almost absurd 
touch of luxury to the miserable place. Farther 
up the trench I found the Brigade Staff Cap- 
tain in a similar dug-out and after making in- 
quiries as to the position of the Queen's West- 
minster Regiment which was my objective, I 
left to find it; for the sun was already setting. 
The path was across the open fields, and the 
saddest I have ever trod. I was alone and 
had but little idea of location, but it was im- 
possible to miss the path. On the right and 
left, it was marked at every few steps with 
dead men. Most of them were still grasping 
their rifles. They had fallen forward as they 
rushed over the ground, and their faces — their 
poor, blackened, lipless faces — were towards 
the foe. There had, as yet, been no oppor- 
tunity to bury them for the ground was still 
being shelled and the burial parties had been 
all too busily engaged in other parts of the 
field. I longed to search for their identity 
discs that I might know who they were and 
make a note of the names; but I had to leave 
it to the burial party. I was already feeling 
sick with the foul smells in the trench and the 
sights on the way, and lacked the strength to 
look for the discs around the wrists and necks 
of the poor, decomposed bodies. It had to be 
left to men of the burial party whose nerves 



A Soldier's Calvary 185 

were somewhat more hardened to the task by 
other experiences of the kind. It was a new 
Calvary on which I was standing. These poor 
bodies miles from home and with no woman's 
hands to perform the last offices of affection 
were lying there as the price of the world's 
freedom. 

Would that all who talk glibly of freedom 
and justice might have seen what I saw on that 
dreary journey, that they might the better real- 
ize the spiritual depths of liberty and righteous- 
ness, and the high cost at which they are won 
for the race. It is fatally easy to persuade our- 
selves that there is no need for us to tread the 
bitter path of suffering and death — that v/e can 
achieve freedom and justice by being charitable, 
and by talking amiably to our enemies. We 
try to believe that they are as anxious to 
achieve liberty for the world as we are, that 
they are striving to bind mankind in fetters of 
iron, only through lack of knowledge as to 
our intentions. Their hearts and intentions are 
good but they are misled, and after a little talk 
with them around a table they would put off 
their "shining armor" and become angels of 
light carrying palm branches in place of swords 
and fetters. 

This is a mighty pleasant theory, only it is 
not true ; and we cannot get rid of evil by ignor- 



186 A Soldier's Calvary 

ing it, nor of the devil by buying him a new 
suit. There are men willing to die to destroy 
liberty, just as there are others willing to die 
in its defense. It is not that they do not under- 
stand liberty. They do, and that is why they 
wish to destroy it. It is the enemy of their 
ideal. Whether liberty will survive or not, 
depends upon whether there are more men in- 
spired to die in defending liberty, than there 
are willing to die in opposing it. A thing lives 
while men love it sufficiently well to die for it. 
We get what we deserve; and readiness to die 
for it is the price God has put on liberty. 

Words are things too cheap to buy it. When 
someone suggested establishing a new religion 
to supersede Christianity, Voltaire is reported 
to have asked if the founder were willing to 
be crucified for it? Otherwise, it would stand 
no chance of success. It was a deep criticism, 
and showed that Voltaire was no fool. Blood is 
the test, not words. A nation can only achieve 
liberty when it is determined to be free or die. 
"Whosoever shall seek to save his life shall 
lose it." "Never man spake" as Christ spake, 
but He did not save the world by talking to 
it, but by dying for it. Outpoured blood, not 
outpoured words, is the proof of moral con- 
victions and the means of their propaganda; 
our soldiers may not be learned in some things. 



A^Soldier's Calvary 187, 

but they have learned that. They know the 
cause will win which has most moral power, and 
that the cause with most moral strength will 
prove itself to be the one with most martyrs. 
And the side with most men ready to be mar- 
tyrs will outstay the other. The spirit of 
martyrdom, not negotiation, is the path to 
liberty and peace. You cannot negotiate with 
a tiger. The dispute is too simple for negotia- 
tion. You have to kill the tiger, or yourself be 
killed. 

While I was on leave, a man told me that 
he had asked some soldiers from the Front 
why they were fighting, and they could not tell 
him. Probably. All the deepest things are 
of life beyond telling. No true man can tell 
why he loves his wife or children. This trust 
In words, in being able to "tell why," is truly 
pathetic. I would not trust a wife's love if 
she could tell her husband exactly why she 
loved him; nor would I trust our soldiers not 
to turn tail In battle if they could tell just why 
they are fighting. They cannot tell, but with 
their poor llpless faces turned defiantly against 
the foe they can show why they are fighting. 
Let those who want to know the soldiers' rea- 
son why they fight go and see them there on 
the blasted field of battle, not ask them when 
they come home on leave. The lips of a soldier 



188 A Soldier's Calvary 

perish jirst, as his dead body lies exposed on 
the battlefield; his rifle he clutches to the last; 
and it is a lesson terrible enough for even the 
densest talker to understand. 

The dead lads lying out in the open with 
their rifles pointing towards the enemy voice 
their reason why loud enough for the deaf 
to hear and the world to heed. Ideals must 
be died for if they are to be realized on 
earth, for they have bitter enemies who 
stick at nothing. And we have to defend our 
ideal with our lives or be cravens and let it 
perish. 

History, with unimportant variations, is con- 
stantly repeating itself; and in nothing is it 
so consistent as in the price it puts on liberty. 
The lease of liberty runs out; the lease has 
to be renewed, and it is renewed by suffering 
and martyrdom. The dear dead lads whom 
I saw on that terrible afternoon were renew- 
ing the lease. With their bodies they had 
marked out a highway over which the peoples 
of the earth may march to freedom and to 
justice. 

The view, all too common, that our soldiers 
regard the war a$ a kind of picnic, and an 
attack as a sort of rush for the goal in a game 
of football, is false — false as sin. It is a view 
blind to the whole psychology of the war, and 



A Soldier's Calvary 189 

misses the meaning of our soldiers' gayety asi 
much as it ignores their fear and sorrow. The 
trenches are a Gethsemane to them and their 
prayer is, "Our Father, all things are possible 
unto Thee : take away this cup from me : never- 
theless not what I will, but what Thou wilt." 

One day, when I went into a mess-room in 
which letters were being censored, an officer 
said to me, "Read this, Padre, there's a refer- 
ence to you, and a candid expression of a man's 
attitude towards religion." 

I took the letter and it read: "Our chaplain 
isn't far out when he says, in his book, that 
though we may speak lightly of the church we 
don't think or speak lightly of Christ. How- 
ever careless we may be when we are out of 
the trenches, when we are in we all pray. 
There is nothing else we can do." 

I have been eighteen months with a fighting 
regiment on the Front, and I have never spoken 
to any officer who did not regard it as a mathe- 
matical certainty that, unless he happened to 
fall sick or be transferred — neither of which 
he expected — he would be either killed or 
wounded. And I agreed with him without say- 
ing it. He does not even hope to escape 
wounds. They are inevitable if he stays long 
enough; for one battle follows another and his 
time comes. He only hopes to escape death 



190 A Soldier's Calvary 

and the more ghastly wounds. He hopes the 
wound when it comes will be a "cushy one." 
The men take the same view. The period be- 
fore going into the trenches, or into battle, is 
to them like the Garden of Gethsemane was 
to Christ; they are "exceeding sorrowful" and 
in their presence I have often felt as one who 
stood "as it were, a stone's throw" from them. 
They are going out with the expectation of 
meeting death. 

On the 1st of July, 191 6, twenty officers in 
our regiment went over the top. Nineteen 
were killed or wounded and the one who re- 
turned to the regiment was suffering from 
shell-shock and had to be sent home. Although 
our losses are much lower now, the officers and 
men experience the agony and bloody sweat 
of Gethsemane rather than the pleasure of a 
picnic in Epping Forest. This explains, too, 
their gayety. It is the happiness of men who 
know that they are doing their bit for the 
world's good, and playing the man, not the 
cad. The rise of happiness into gayety is the 
natural reaction from the sorrow and alarm 
which have been clouding their hearts. In 
peace time they will never know either the in- 
tensity of joy or sorrow they know now. A 
man never feels so truly humorous as when he 
is sad. Humor is a kind of inverted sadness. 



A Soldier's Calvary 191 

The most exquisite sadness produces the most 
exquisite humor as the deepest wells give the 
sweetest, purest and coldest water. 

Tears and laughter are never far from one another, 
The heart overflows on one side, and then on the other. 

Our soldiers' minds are not filled with 
thoughts of Germans, but with thoughts of the 
friends they have left behind them. Nor do 
they often think of killing Germans. They 
neither think so much of the Germans nor so 
bitterly of them as do the people at home. 
The Germans have not the same prominence 
in the picture. Deeds relieve their emotions in 
regard to the Germans and leave their hearts 
open for the things and folk they love. 

It is commonly supposed (and this idea is 
fostered by some war correspondents), that 
when our men go over the top they are pos- 
sessed with a mad lust to kill Germans. The 
ultimate aim of a general planning a battle is 
to kill Germans no doubt, for that is the only 
way to achieve victory; and if the Germans do 
not want to be killed they know what to do. 
Let them surrender or retire. The private 
agrees with the general in the necessity for 
killing Germans, but that is not what he is 
thinking of when he goes over the top; nor is 
It what we should be thinking of in his place. 



192 A Soldier's Calvary 

He is thinking of the Germans killing him. 
Life is sweet at nineteen or one-and-twenty. It 
pleads to be spared a little longer, A lad does 
not want to die ; and as he goes over the parapet 
he is thinking less of taking German lives than 
of losing his own. He knows that German 
heads will not fit English shoulders, and that, 
however many enemy lives he may take, none 
of them will restore his own if he loses it, as 
he is quite likely to do. He is going out to 
be mutilated or to die. That is his standpoint 
whatever may be the general's or the war-cor- 
respondent's. He goes for his country's sake 
and the right. It is his duty, and there is an 
end of it. 

Most of the killing In modern war is done 
by the artillery and machine-guns. Compara- 
tively few men have seen the face of an enemy 
they know themselves to have killed. A regi- 
ment goes out to be shot at, rather than to 
shoot. Unless this simple fact be grasped, the 
mentality of the soldier cannot be understood. 
The lust for killing Germans would never take 
a man out of his dug-out; but the love of his 
country and the resolve to do his duty will take 
him out and lead him over the top. It is what 
he volunteered for, but It goes hard when the 
time comes for all that. 

The unburled men I saw had, but a short 



A Soldier's Calvary 193 

while ago, no idea of becoming soldiers. They 
were the light of a home and the stay of a 
business. With that they were content. But 
the challenge came; and they went out to de- 
fend the right against the wrong — the true 
against the false. They toiled up a new Cal- 
vary "with the cross that turns not back," and 
now they lie buried in a strange land. They 
have lost all for themselves, but they have 
gained all for us and for those who will come 
after us. Yet although they saved others, them- 
selves they could not save. 



XVIII 
THE HOSPITAL TRAIN 

WE were carried from our regiments to 
the hospital in ambulance cars. I, 
and several others, had trench fever. 
Some were suffering from gas poisoning. One 
lovely boy — for he was nothing more — was 
near to death with "mustard" gas. The doctor 
at the Dressing Station had opened a vein and 
bled him of a pint of blood. It was the only 
hope of saving him. But as the car bumped 
over the rough roads and the gas in his lungs 
grew more suffocating he almost despaired of 
reaching the hospital alive. Others were 
wounded; and one had appendicitis. After a 
period in hospital, during which we were hon- 
ored with a visit by General Byng, it was de- 
cided that we should go to the Base. We lay 
down on stretchers, and orderlies carried us to 
the waiting cars. At the station we were lifted 
into the hospital train. The racks had been 
taken down and stretchers put in their places. 
These were reserved for the "lying cases." 
194 



The Hospital Train 195 

The "sitting cases" occupied the seats — one to 
each corner. It was afternoon and as soon as 
the train began to move tea was served. The 
train sped on and, about sun-set, a most ex- 
cellent dinner was provided by the orderlies on 
board. 

It was the time of the new moon. "Keep 
the window open," said one, "it is unlucky to 
see the new moon through glass, and we need 
all the good luck we can get," and he avoided 
looking through the glass until he had seen the 
moon through the open window. We chatted, 
read our magazines, or slept — ^just as we felt 
inclined. The night wore on and at about two 
o'clock we reached Rouen. Cars rushed us to 
one of the Red Cross hospitals. A doctor 
slipped out of bed, examined our cards, decided 
In which wards we should be put, and orderlies 
led or carried us thither. A nurse showed each 
of us to his room. We were got to bed and 
another nurse brought some tea. Next morn- 
ing we were examined and put down for re- 
moval across the Channel. 

The nurses are radiant as sunshine, and dif- 
fuse a spirit of merriment throughout the 
hospital. It was a pure joy to be under their 
care. At three o'clock the following morning, 
without previous warning, a nurse came and 
awakened us. We had half an hour to dress. 



196 The Hospital Train 

Another nurse then came round with a dainty- 
breakfast. We were then put into cars and 
taken to the hospital train. It left as dawn 
was breaking, and we were on our way to 
*'Bhghty." We had a comfortable journey and 
reached Havre about nine. Orderlies carried 
us on board ship and we were taken to our 
cots. Breakfast was served immediately. We 
felt a huge content; and hoped to be across by 
night. But the ship remained by the quay all 
day. In the evening it moved out of the harbor 
and lay near its mouth. Towards midnight it 
slipped its anchor and headed for home. 

All had received life-belts and a card direct- 
ing us which boat to make for, should the ship 
be torpedoed. Mine was "Boat 5, Starboard." 
My neighbor on the right had been on a tor- 
pedoed boat once and had no desire to be on 
another. The lights of the ship were obscured 
or put out, and we silently stole over the waters 
towards the much desired haven. There was 
no sound but the steady thump of the engines, 
and we were soon asleep. Shortly after dawn 
we awoke to find ourselves in Southampton 
Water. A water-plane drew near, settled like 
a gull on the water, and then plowed its way 
through the waves with the speed of a motor- 
boat. 

About nine o'clock we were carried off the 



The Hospital Train 197 

boat to the station. Women workers supplied us 
with telegraph forms, confectionery and cigar- 
ettes ; orderlies brought us tea. We were then 
taken to the train. It was even more comfortable 
than the hospital trains in France; and we had 
women nurses. On each side of the train, for 
its full length, were comfortable beds and we 
were able to sit up or recline at our pleasure. 
Lunch was served on board, and of a char- 
acter to tempt the most ailing man. No short- 
age of food is allowed to obtain on the hospital 
train. It has the first claim on the food supply 
and it has the first claim to the railroad. It 
stops at no station except for its own con- 
venience. Even the King's train stops to let 
the hospital train pass. 

We were under the care of a nurse who had 
reached middle life. She had been on a tor- 
pedoed hospital ship! on one that struck a 
mine without bursting it; and on another that 
collided with a destroyer in the dark. She was 
greatly disappointed at the decision which had 
removed nurses from the hospital ships because 
of the danger from submarines. She fully ap- 
preciated the chivalry of the men who would 
not let their women be drowned; but it had 
robbed the women of a chance of proving their 
devotion, and she could not see why the men 
should do all the dying. The women were 



198 The Hospital Train 

ready to meet death with the men and as their 
mates and equals. Their place was with the 
wounded whatever might befall, and they were 
ready. 

Hospital trains have run daily for three 
years now, and human nature can get used to 
anything. We thought, therefore, that the 
people would have become used to the hospital 
train. But greater surprise never gladdened a 
man's heart than the one which awaited us as 
we steamed out of Southampton. All the 
women and children by the side of the railway 
were at their windows or in their gardens, wav- 
ing their hands to us. And all the way to 
Manchester the waving of welcoming hands 
never ceased. At every station the porters 
doffed their caps to the hospital train as It sped 
past. There was not a station large or small 
that did not greet us with a group of proud 
smiling faces. Our eyes were glued to the 
windows all the way. For one day In our lives, 
at least, we were kings, and our procession 
through "England's green and pleasant land'* 
was a royal one. We passed through quiet 
country districts but at every wall or fence 
there were happy faces. We wondered where 
they all came from, and how they knew of our 
coming. There were tiny children sitting on 



The Hospital Train 199 

all the railway fences waving hands to us. 
One little girl of four or five was sitting on the 
fence by a country station and waving her little 
hand. We had not seen English children for 
months and Pope Gregory spoke the truth 
ages ago when he said that they are "not 
Angles but Angels." The sight of them after 
so long an absence was as refreshing to the 
spirit as the sight of violets and primroses 
after a long and bitter winter. 

At Birmingham the train made its only stop. 
Men and women of the St. John Ambulance 
Association boarded the train and supplied us 
with tea; and, as the train moved out, stood 
at attention on the platform. At Manchester 
we received a warm welcome that told us we 
were in Lancashire. Men and women helped 
us to the waiting cars and handed cups of tea 
to us. It was raining of course — ^being Man- 
chester — ^but as we passed near a railway arch 
a waiting crowd rushed out Into the rain and 
startled us with a cry of welcome which was also 
a cry of pain. Most of the men In the cars 
were Lancashire lads and In the welcome given 
them there were tears as well as smiles. Lan- 
cashire has a great heart as well as a long head. 
It suffers with those who suffer and the cry of 
the heart was heard In the welcome of its 



200 The Hospital Train 

voice. There was a welcome too, at the door 
of the hospital and at the door of each ward. 
Water was brought to our bedside, and then 
a tray bearing a well-cooked dinner. 
We had reached home. 



XIX 
AFTER WINTER, SPRING 

A MAN'S heart must be dead within him 
if, under the summer sun, he can look 
on the desolated ground of the West- 
ern battle-front without feeling emotions of 
joy and hope. In the winter-time the clumps 
of blasted trees looked like groups of forsaken 
cripples. Their broken branches stood out 
against the gray sky in utter nakedness, as if 
appealing to heaven against the inhumanity of 
man. In a way, it was more depressing to 
pass a ruined wood than a destroyed village. 
Some of the trees had all their limbs shattered; 
others, thicker than a man's body, were cut 
clean through the middle; others, again, were 
torn clean up by the roots and lay sprawling 
on the ground. It seemed impossible that spring 
could ever again clothe them in her garments 
of gladdening green. We imagined the trees 
would appear amid the sunshine of the sum- 
mer black, gaunt and irreconcilable; pointing 
their mangled stumps towards those who had 
201 



202 After Winter, Spring 

done them such irreparable wrong and, as the 
wind whistled through them, calling on all de- 
cent men to rise up and avenge them of their 
enemies. 

But, suddenly, we found that the reconciling 
spring was back in the woods exercising all 
her oldtime witchery. Each broken limb was 
covered with fresh foliage and each scarred 
stump put out sprouts of green. The broken 
but blossoming woods grew into a picture of 
Hope, Infinitely more sublime and touching 
than the one to which Watts gave the name. 
It was a picture drawn and colored by the 
finger of God, and it made the fairest of man's 
handiwork look weak and Incomplete. Up- 
rooted trees lay on the ground in full blossom, 
and shell-lopped branches again took on the 
form of beauty. The transformation was won- 
derful to behold. 

And it all happened In a week. When our 
men went into the trenches the trees were 
black, bare and bruised, but when they came 
out of the front line into the support-trenches 
the wood behind them was a tender green and 
had grown curved and symmetrical. It seemed 
as If the fairies of our childhood had returned 
to the earth and were dwelling in the wood. 
Although two long-range naval guns lay hidden 
behind it, which, with deep imprecations opened 



After Winter, Spring 203 

their terrible mouths to hurl fiery thunderbolts 
at the enemy, the fairies seemed unafraid and 
daily continued to weave for the trees beauti- 
ful garments of leaf and blossom. I have seen 
nothing that brought such gladness to both 
officers and men. A new spirit seemed abroad. 
We were in a new atmosphere and a new 
world. The war seemed already won, and the 
work of renewal and reconstruction begun. 

And now the summer had done for the 
ground what the spring did for the trees. One 
Sunday, I was to hold a service on ground 
that was, in the springtime. No Man's Land. 
Having ample time I left the dusty road and 
walked across the broken fields through which 
our front-line trenches had run. There were 
innumerable shell holes and I had to pick my 
way with care through the long grass and 
lingering barbed wire. I had been over the 
ground on the day following the advance. 
Then it was a sea of mud, with vast break- 
waters of rusty barbed wire. Now, however, 
Nature's healing hand was at work. Slowly 
but surely the trenches were falling in, and the 
shell-holes filling up. The lips of the craters 
and trenches were red as a maiden's — red with 
the poppies which come to them. Here and 
there were large patches of gold and white 
where unseen hands had sown the mud with 



204 After Winter, Spring 

dog-daisies. There were other patches all 
ablaze with the red fire of the poppies, and as 
the slender plants swayed in the wind, the fire 
leaped up or died down. 

When the war broke out I was in "Poppy- 
land" near Cromer, in East Anglia. There I 
first heard the tramp of armed men on the way 
to France, and there first caught the strain of 
"Tipperary" — the farewell song of the First 
Seven Divisions — a strain I can never hear 
now without having to stifle back my tears. 
As I passed by these patches of blood-red pop- 
pies I thought of those old and stirring days 
at Cromer when we watched a regiment of the 
original Expeditionary Force singing "Tip- 
perary" as it marched swingingly through the 
narrow streets. The declaration of war was 
hourly expected and the pier and some of the 
Sunday-school rooms were given to the soldiers 
for billets. By morning every soldier had 
vanished and we could only guess where, but 
a remark made by one of them to another 
lingers still. They were standing apart, and 
watching the fuss the people were making over 
the regiment. 

"Yes," he said to his comrade, "they think 
a great deal of the soldiers in time of war, 
but they don't think much of us in days of 
peace." 



After Winter, Spring 205 

The remark was so true that it cut like a 
knife and the wound rankles yet. I have often 
wondered what became of the lad that went 
out to France to the horrors of war, with such 
memories of our attitude towards him in the 
times of peace. I hope he lived long enough 
to see our repentance. His memory haunted 
me among the poppies of Beaurains, In the 
English Poppyland there was nothing to com- 
pare with the red-coated army of poppies now 
occupying our old front line. In these trenches 
our gallant men had for nearly three years 
fought and bled, and it seemed as if every drop 
of blood poured out by them had turned into 
a glorious and triumphant poppy. 

The spring and summer have taught me 
afresh that there is in our lives a Power that 
is not ourselves. It is imminent in us and in 
all things, yet transcends all. "Change and 
decay in all around we see," and still there is 
One who changes not; He ^^from everlasting 
to everlasting is God." He is the fountain of 
eternal life that no drought can touch. He 
heals the broken tree and the broken heart. 
He clothes the desolate iields of war with the 
golden corn of peace, and in the trenches that 
war has scored across the souls of men, he 
plants the rich poppies of memory. He drives 
away the icy oppression of winter with the 



206 After Winter, Spring 

breath or spring, and in His mercy assuages 
*'the grief that saps the mind for those that 
here we see no more." 

He who turns rain-mists into rainbows and 
brings out of mud scarlet poppies and white- 
petaled daisies without a speck of dirt upon 
them, is at work in human life. Out of mud 
He has formed the poppy and out of the dust 
the body of man. Who then can set Him 
limits when He works in the finer material of 
man's soul? Eye hath not seen nor heart con- 
ceived the beauty that will come forth when 
His workmanship is complete. "If God so 
clothe the grass of the field, which to-day is, 
and to-morrow is cast into the oven, shall He 
not much more clothe you, O ye of little faith" 
who were made for Immortality? His ways 
are past finding out, but they are good. He 
puts out the sun but brings forth millions of 
stars in its stead. At His call they come flock- 
ing forth as doves to their windows. He 
blinds Milton but brings Into his soul a flood 
of light such as never shone on sea or land, 
and in its rays he sees Paradise, lost and re- 
gained. He shuts Bunyan in a noisome prison, 
and closes against him the door to his beloved 
Bedford, but He opens to him a magic window 
that looks on heaven, and the years pass swiftly 
as he watches the progress of the pilgrims to- 



After Winter, Spring 207 

wards the Celestial City. In the mud that 
has been stained and even saturated with the 
life-blood of our soldiers, He has made poppies 
to spring to loveliness. It is a parable He is 
speaking to us, that the heart of man may feel 
and believe that which it is beyond the power 
of the mind to grasp, or the tongue to explain. 
The wounds of France are deep and deadly 
but they are not self-inflicted and they will heal. 
She will blossom again with a glory greater 
and purer than all her former glories. She 
is even now finding her soul, and revealing a 
moral beauty and endurance such as few, even 
of her dearest friends, could have foreseen or 
foretold. For ashes, God has given her beauty, 
and it is worth all her suffering. Not Voltaire, 
but Joan of Arc is her pride to-day. When 
I was in Rouen I saw the fresh flowers which 
the people daily place on the spot where she 
died. France knows where her strength lies. 
Over Napoleon she has built a magnificent 
tomb of marble, but in it, she has not placed 
a single flower. As I walked through it, some 
time ago, I felt depressed. It made me shiver. 
It is magnificent, but dead. One of Joan of 
Arc's living flowers would be worth the whole 
pile. It is the most tremendous sermon ever 
preached on the vanity of military glory and 
the emptiness of genius when uninspired by 



208 After Winter, Spring 

moral and spiritual worth. France knows. 
She gives Joan of Arc a flower, but Napoleon 
a stone. France was never so great as now, 
and never of such supreme importance to the 
world. We could not do without her. On her 
coins she represents herself as a Sower that 
goes forth sowing. It is a noble ideal, and 
truly, where she scatters her seeds of thought 
the fair flowers of liberty, equality and fratern- 
ity spring up as poppies spring, where the 
blood of our soldiers has watered her fields. 
France is the fair Sower among the nations, and 
it will be our eternal glory that when she was 
suddenly and murderously attacked in her fields 
by her brutal and envious neighbor — who 
shamelessly stamps a bird of prey on his coins 
for his symbol, and a skull and cross-bones on 
his soldiers' headgear as the expression of his 
ambition — England came to her rescue, and 
not in vain. The German sword has gone 
deeply into the heart of France, but it will leave 
not a festering wound but a well of water at 
which mankind will drink and be refreshed. 
Wound the earth, and there springs forth 
water; wound France and there springs forth 
inspiration. Trample France in the mud, and 
she comes forth pure again, passionate and free 
as a poppy blown by the summer wind. 

f 

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